Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  "I'm not?"

  "No one does. It's just an ornament, really. It's only there to make you feel special for having it. It's like a spleen, only it makes you feel special for having it."

  "That doesn't make any sense," said Sloot. "If that's true, why are the poets always going on about the immortal soul?"

  "Do you want to talk about sense or poetry?"

  She had him there. You couldn't find a poet alive—sorry—who'd stand idly by while reason and logic were applied to their work. On the contrary, they'd most likely throw themselves on the floor and perform an eloquent tantrum about immortal essence withering on a vine, and other, more tragic metaphors as well, prompting any stoics in the room to casually start inching toward the door.

  "I think it’s mostly demonic tradition," said Myrtle. "I have to have your soul in exchange for using my power on your behalf."

  A thought occurred to Sloot. He could ask her to bend the rules, just this once.

  "All right then," said Sloot, "go ahead and take it."

  Not likely! Bending the rules, in Sloot's opinion, was no different from breaking them. In fact, simply saying "bending" in lieu of having the fortitude to come right out and say it was the height of shame. Best to simply get on with it, then, which was what he did.

  “Oh, not yet,” said Myrtle. “You hang onto it for now, enjoy the spoils, and I will come collect it at a very dramatic moment. After the job’s done.”

  “Okay,” said Sloot. On the bright side, had he chosen to look there, Sloot would have considered it better to give his soul over to Myrtle than let Grumley cast it into the Well of the Void for eternity. Probably. In retrospect, he only had Grumley’s word that it was an awful place where he’d be tortured for an eternity. He’d never seen it. If Myrtle was right, and it was just an ornamental sort of thing, perhaps the Well of the Void was more of a lost-and-found than an eternal swear-word-starting-with-an-H. A crevice between the sofa cushions of eternity.

  What Dwells in the Dark

  “It isn’t nonsense,” said Nicoleta. “It’s just not very important, that’s all.”

  “Then vhy to ve have to be here?” asked Bartleby. He had the pained look of a six-year-old who’d sat through thirty minutes of church, and was breathing in sighs to match. Willie used to do the same when he had to stand still for portraits.

  “Myrtle seems to think there’s something here that will get Sloot out from under his woes,” said Nicoleta.

  “And vhat might that be?”

  “She didn’t say,” said Nicoleta with a shrug. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Never qvestion a demon,” said Bartleby. “It never ends vell. I don’t suppose she mentioned vhy I have to be here?”

  “You’re the only person at liberty to turn the pages. Roman’s always mysteriously unavailable when this sort of thing comes up.”

  It hadn’t been that long ago—well, probably not, anyway—that Sloot and Myrtle had happened upon Willie walking into what looked like a government building. The people inside had bowed before him, and then … well, Sloot wasn’t really sure what had happened next. He’d been summoned away by Winking Bob, much to his chagrin.

  It turned out that the building was the headquarters of the Royal Astronomical Society. It also turned out that astronomy, in Nicoleta’s opinion, was about as useful as a book on democracy in the Domnitor’s library, long may he reign.

  “I mean, it serves a purpose,” she said, “but astrology is where the real power lies.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” said Sloot.

  “Oh. Is that not what you’ve heard?”

  “Er,” said Sloot, weighing his response with care. Her words implied that they were having an open discussion among peers, but her tone suggested that the two of them had just entered a cage that only one of them was destined to leave. He could nearly hear the shouts of the old men shaking fistfuls of cash, mostly in her direction.

  “I’ve heard that you can just round down all of your sums and keep the change,” she said.

  “Now hold on just a minute—”

  “Well, that’s what I’ve heard!” It was more than an interruption. It was a dare. Let’s offer up our expertise on each other’s field, it spat. That’s a really good idea that’s sure to maintain our friendship well into the next couple of minutes.

  “So what’s the purpose of astronomy?”

  Nicoleta smirked. “It’s the basis of astrology,” she said. “The positions of the planets, the stars, their trajectories through the heavens, all of it’s important. It’s just boring. Astrology, on the other hand, that’s where things get interesting.”

  “Do you vant me to move on the next vone?” asked Bartleby.

  “Skip ahead a bit,” said Nicoleta. She pointed to a shelf full of ledgers that looked exactly like the hundreds of other ledgers in the building. It was like an entire library held hostage by a single bookbinder.

  “Once you know where the stars are going,” she continued, “you can start to see what’s going to happen next. I imagine that’s why Myrtle sent us here, but it would have been nice if she could have been more specific. I don’t even know what I’m … wait a minute …”

  “What,” asked Sloot, “did you find something?”

  “I did,” said Nicoleta, “but about five hundred years too late. You remember the Delightful Uprising?”

  “I read about it in history,” said Sloot. “I was always confused about the name.”

  “History is written by the vinners,” said Bartleby. “It vas delightful for them.”

  "Delightful for him," Nicoleta said. "The Domnitor was the only winner in that bloody mess."

  "Long may he reign," said Sloot.

  "Honestly, vhen are you going to stop doing that?" Bartleby flipped another page for Nicoleta.

  "Stop doing what?"

  "Bowing and scraping to the Domnitor."

  "Long may he reign."

  "There it is again! Are you just doing it out of habit?"

  "Doing what?"

  "Wait!" shouted Nicoleta.

  "Vhat?"

  "Go back a page."

  Bartleby turned back a page and Nicoleta gave the book a good staring-down. Sloot looked over her shoulder, or rather, through it. It looked a lot like the hundreds of other pages they'd reviewed that night, though this one had far more notes in the margins than most.

  "Vicked," said Bartleby.

  "What do they say?" asked Sloot, who didn't recognize the language of the notes.

  "No idea," said Bartleby, "but they look really cool."

  "It's Goblish," said Nicoleta. "Don't tell me you can't read Goblish!"

  "I never bothered learning. I didn't know the letters looked so creepy, or I'd have done a long time ago!"

  "Goblish," said Sloot. "As in ... " He mouthed the word “goblins” instead of saying it aloud.

  "Of course," said Nicoleta. "Am I the only one here who knows Goblish?"

  "How?" Sloot was aghast at the thought of learning to speak to so vile a species. "Why?"

  "Why not? There's no such thing as bad knowledge, you know. Well, except for everything in the Anathemic Library of Ulfhaven. And the locked shelf in my tower. Oh, how I miss my tower!"

  "Ooh, I can play this vone! I buried a book in the desert about three hundred years ago. I couldn't read a vord of it, but it nearly drove me to madness anyvay."

  "What was it called?" asked Nicoleta.

  "I can't pronounce it," said Bartleby, "but it's an ancient svear vord that means 'the quivering satisfaction of just having peeled your face off and gift-wrapped it for the supernatural horror who's about to consume you.'"

  "Oh, I think that's—"

  "Please don't," implored Sloot, who did a nervous little dance. He had no desire to add such a word to his vocabulary. He was already having enough trouble coming to grips with the idea that goblins’ chattering was actually speech, not just a spirit of general excitement at the prospect of making rude intestin
al noises.

  "It's a new constellation," said Nicoleta.

  "What is?"

  "The notes! They're describing a constellation that's never appeared in the sky. Wait. No, it was there a long time ago. Thousands of years ago, and then it came down to ... oh, dear."

  Despite the negative connotation, Sloot liked "oh, dear." It was a good phrase. You always knew where you stood with it. He took a moment to appreciate the fact that he knew better than to get his hopes up, and girded himself for the panic that was soon to come.

  “I think the Serpents of the Earth are going to put it back.”

  “Put vhat back?”

  “The Serpent of the Sky.”

  Like an old, familiar friend who’d stopped by to remind him that everything was horribly wrong, a panic rose up in Sloot. It was too bad he no longer slept, as this one seemed ready and able to keep him awake for days on end. A lot of wasted potential there.

  “A flying snake?” he asked, his voice quavering for fear of both snakes and heights.

  “Worse,” said Nicoleta. “The Serpent of the Sky is a constellation, a source of great power for the Serpents of the Earth if they’re able to harness its power.”

  “That’s villains for you,” said Myrtle. “They don’t do anything with their power. They just hoard it like those big beer mugs that they sell for Overdrinkerfest every year.”

  Myrtle had been waiting in the parlor when they returned from the Royal Astronomical Society. It was quiet. As close to pleasant in the house as it had ever been, in Sloot’s reckoning. Nan was hiding in the basement from Constantin, who was doddering upstairs. He’d gotten very good at doddering of late, as though he’d been taking lessons. It was good that he was keeping busy, Sloot thought.

  They kept getting up to check on Willie because he was so quiet. Suspiciously quiet. Children who’ve gotten into mommy’s cosmetics quiet. But every time they looked, he was sitting in the circle, grinning like a fox eating peanut butter from a wire brush. That was unsettling, but not nearly as much as the giggling. It was bursting with treachery. It was the sort of giggle you did when you knew something everyone else didn’t, and they were all going to hate it when they found out.

  Fortunately for Sloot, his over-developed capacity for denial wasn’t going to let something as silly as the imminent unleashing of evil prevent him from enjoying an otherwise pleasant conversation. Even if it was about the impending doom threatening the world at the hands of the Serpents of the Earth.

  “I don’t know,” said Bartleby. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. A lot of dark magic goes into putting evil stars in the sky. It’s vicked cool.”

  “Cool as it may be,” said Nicoleta, who’d given up on reprimanding Bartleby’s praising evil for its style, “it’s got to be dangerous. Like Myrtle said, villains like to hoard power. They wouldn’t spend it unless there was a big payoff.”

  “Well, let’s think through it logically,” said Myrtle. “What does Mrs. Knife want?”

  “Probably world domination,” scoffed Nicoleta. “Honestly, villains are so predictable. It’s always world domination.”

  “Willie might know,” said Myrtle. “He seems to know an awful lot he’s not telling.”

  “Directions to Carpathia,” said Sloot.

  “Vhat? Go north. That’s it.”

  “I know,” said Sloot, “it doesn’t make sense. Just don’t bring it up around her! She tried to stab me last time.”

  “You’re dead, Sloot.” Nicoleta had never seemed very impressed with Sloot, and evidently wasn’t interested in starting just then.

  “Hang on a minute,” said Myrtle. “You asked her why she wanted directions to Carpathia and she tried to stab you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “Well, she started raving about the Dark before that.”

  Myrtle rolled her eyes. “Honestly, you didn’t consider why she might have been trying to stab you?”

  He hadn’t, in fact. In Sloot’s estimation, crazed villains’ motivations for attempted stabbing were far less important than the deed having gotten underway.

  He shrugged.

  “And just to be clear, you said the Dark, right? Not just the dark?”

  “Right,” said Sloot, “like proper Dark. Her eyes went all crazy villain and her knife came out. Rave, rave, rave. Stab, stab, stab.”

  “What could that mean?” pondered Myrtle. “The Dark.”

  “Vell,” said Bartleby, “it might be too obvious, but she could be talking about … the Dark.”

  Of course, Bartleby would know. He lived for that kind of stuff. Perhaps lived was the wrong word to apply to a necromancer. Sloot thought of Gregor, who looked like little more than a flaky pastry crust baked onto an old skeleton. Was Bartleby alive? Given that he could cross the veil between the Narrative and the Hereafter at will, Sloot had doubts.

  Bartleby explained at length—because he kept getting excited about anecdotes that led him down tangents about other “vicked” dark things—that the Dark was a very real place. Well, not very real. It was a sort of ethereal pocket that didn’t so much exist between the proper planes of existence as lurk among them. It seemed to have formed of its own volition a very long time ago.

  Luckily for all of the prehistoric entities floating around in the ether back then, the demons were aware of the Dark forming, and decided to keep an eye on it. The most important bit of information to arise from the passage of countless aeons of vigilance was that nothing ever came forth from it. It really didn’t pay to be a low-level demon back then, especially if you’d gotten into the job for the excitement.

  The dwarves who live under the mountains in Svartalfheim—which was technically within the borders of Nordheim, though one would do well to avoid bringing that up around them—were one of the first mortal races to learn about the Dark. The dwarves were curious and inventive, two traits that turned out to be very detrimental to the goblins, who would fight just about anybody back then. They fought a years-long war with the dwarves, which the dwarves won.

  The problem with goblins … well, there wasn’t just one. Goblins were essentially the result that one would expect from a mad scientist being handed trickery, deceit, and a handful of razor-sharp teeth, and then expected to not use them to create something monstrous and capable of destroying all of existence. But the particular problem that the dwarves faced when they defeated them was that goblins didn’t so much live in places as infest them. Any respectable race of mortals would define boundaries, build cities, and implement municipal tax codes to give people a reason to threaten to vote for the other guy next time. The goblins didn’t have any of that.

  There were certain things you were supposed to do when you lost a war. First and foremost, you cleared out of your opponent’s country. Then you probably lost a good deal of your own. It descended into repatriation and politics from there, but the dwarves found themselves in the unfortunate position of being lucky to get past step one. They were a wise and magnanimous bunch, and knew that simply casting them out of the mountain would mean leaving them to infest the other nations of the world. Eventually, they’d just have to fight them all over again, quite possibly in greater numbers.

  “So they cast them into the Dark,” said Nicoleta, her voice barely more than a whisper as she watched Bartleby with a rapt expression.

  Bartleby scoffed. “Really? You let me tell the whole story, then svoop in and give avay the ending?”

  “Sorry,” said Nicoleta.

  “Anyvay,” said Bartleby very pointedly, “the dvarves cast the goblins into the Dark, vhere they vere trapped for centuries.”

  “And then, what?” Sloot puzzled. “They mysteriously started turning up in the Old Country?”

  Bartleby fixed Sloot with a disgusted look, shaking his head slowly. “You people are the vorst!” he shouted. “Can I not have a single dramatic revelation in my own story?”

  “Sorry,” said Sloot.

  “
We’re sorry,” said Nicoleta.

  “Vhatever,” said Bartleby. He burst into a puff of black smoke, and a few bats flew off in different directions. All things considered, it was far more impressive than Willie’s tried-and-true arms-crossed-and-frowning start to a sulk.

  “Where did he go?” asked Myrtle.

  “Off to pout somewhere,” said Nicoleta. “I’ve seen him do it. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s actually quite impressive. He’s a brooder, that one.”

  “So the goblins were all cast into the Dark,” said Sloot. “Nothing ever came out of the Dark, but then they started showing up in the Old Country.”

  “They must have found a way out of the Dark,” said Nicoleta.

  “A way that only leads into the Old Country?”

  “Apparently.”

  That was where it started to get really interesting. Or, more accurately, terrifying. Goblins only ever turned up in the Old Country, and as far as any of them were aware, none of them had ever left. One could reason that the effects of mischief did more damage there than anywhere else, draconian dictatorships being less resistant to shenanigans than more sensibly governed nations; however, one of the few scientific studies to have been performed on goblins had revealed that their love of mischief was rivaled only by their love of revenge.

  “They’d never forgive and forget with the dwarves,” said Myrtle. “Once a sizable host had made it out of the Dark, they’d march straight for Svartalfheim.”

  “And there are thousands of goblins in Salzstadt alone,” said Sloot. He thought back to the Fall of Salzstadt. He’d shouted some of the worst swear words known to humanity—well, known to him, anyway—and must have brought several hundred over from the Dark himself that day.

  “It only makes sense if they can’t leave the Old Country,” said Nicoleta. “They’re trapped there.”

  “They must know that Svartalfheim is in Nordheim,” said Sloot, “and that Nordheim is on the other side of Carpathia. That means they’d just have to—”

  “Find out how to get into Carpathia,” said Bartleby, popping up from behind the couch and startling them all. “That’s vhat it feels like to have your anecdote stolen out from under you!”