Prospero Regained (15 page)

We rapidly poled our way to the nearest solid island. Once there, Mephisto tapped his staff, and I began to imagine we were surrounded by great winged beasts. Then, they were among us: the handsome winged steed, Pegasus; a golden lion with shining mane and downy wings; a gryphon; and the gigantic magnificent roc. Mephisto leapt atop the winged lion. Gregor and I clambered onto Pegasus. Erasmus claimed the gryphon, leaving Mab to sit upon the giant talon of the enormous roc.

Mounted on these creatures, we flew across the swamp. Normally, the joy of flight was my primary delight. Today, however, even the exhilaration of winging along on the back of Pegasus—the terrible swamp passing harmlessly below—eluded me. It could not drive away the image of my charred and scalded brother.

No matter how hard I urged Pegasus on, he did not go fast enough.

Reaching the bridge, we landed and dismounted. Then, we all held hands and ran, Mephisto’s friends padding noisily behind us. Gregor was on the right, his staff ready should the Hellwinds return. With my flute silent, however, all was still. We gained the far side without losing anything more than our breath.

As my feet stepped onto the packed earth, I paused for a single instant to glance back at the bridge.

Had it been only a day ago that we had tried to cross the first time? It seemed like another lifetime.

How exuberant we had been after our victory over Abaddon. We had been laughing, singing even. It had been our first truly happy moment together since the Christmas of 1666.

What could we have been thinking, trespassing upon the Inferno with lighthearted cheer? If only we had not been so hubristic! If we had shown proper respect for our surroundings, we might have succeeded. By now, we might have found Father and been safely back home.

*   *   *

ONCE
on the far side of the Styx, we mounted our supernatural steeds again and flew over the marshy earth. We used John Dee’s crystal ball as our guide. No illusions dazzled the others here. The view I saw and that showed in the ball was the same view the others beheld.

Each foot, each yard that flashed beneath us, I wished was a thousand more. We flew with the speed of eagles, but it was not fast enough to satisfy my sisterly heart.

“These are the Black Bogs of the Styx,” Mephisto called to us from the back of the winged lion. “If you look down long enough, you’ll catch a glimpse of the bodies asleep beneath the surface.”

“How can you see anything?” Mab shaded his eyes as he attempted to peer over the roc’s foot and into the water. “The water is
black
as pitch!”

“They’re there, even if we can’t see ’em,” Mephisto called back. “Though wouldn’t it be eerier if we could? I’ve always thought sleeping beneath the water was eerie. What about you, Miranda?”

“Please, Mephisto,” Erasmus objected, yawning. He was slipping slightly to the one side atop the gryphon. “This place is terrible enough without you telling ghost stories to make it creepier.”

“It’s not a ghost story,” Mephisto insisted. He yawned as well, giving a big wide stretch. “They are actually down there.”

“All the more reason not to dramatize it,” Erasmus called back.

I had been nodding tiredly, my thoughts caught up in fearing for Theo, when suddenly a feeling of free fall in the pit of my stomach made me look up. The flying horse had lowered its head. Its eyes were closed, and it had stopped beating its wings.

We were plummeting.

“Pegasus!” I screamed, yanking on his mane.

The winged steed pulled up and began flapping again, but he careened to the left. I felt as if I was flying on a drunken horse.

Around me, the other winged beasts struggled as well. The roc listed sideways. The winged lion yawned. The gryphon had fallen behind.

“Mephisto,” I cried, “your friends are falling asleep!”

Mephisto craned his head to see. “We have to land! I’ve got to send them away!”

“You mean we have to walk through the bog?” Erasmus cried, aghast. “Don’t you have anything that can help us? I mean this is Theophrastus we’re talking about! The Old Man needs us!”

“And Titus as well,” murmured Gregor.

Mephisto shook his head sadly. “My friends are animals. They don’t have the kind of souls you need to resist the ravages of Hell!”

“What about the angel?” Mab called. “Didn’t you brag about having one that would act like a valet?”

“Angel in Hell … bad idea!” Mephisto squeaked back. “Let’s just say things would get worse, not better.”

A frisson of fear went through me as I thought about Mephisto’s reasoning. I thought about Malagigi’s words:
They have not what is needed to resist the hazards that will face them.
If Mephisto’s creatures could not survive here, what of me? Would I be able to stay awake?

Soul or no soul, I vowed silently, I would not fail Theo!

*   *   *

WE
landed and dismounted, and Mephisto sent his friends home. The ground here was boggy and smelled of peat. Except for the boiling clouds of inky soot overhead and the weird multicolored flames, which ignited intermittently above the bogs before quickly burning out, this could almost be a place on Earth. My brothers and Mab did not report any troubling illusions here, so we no longer needed to hold hands.

We ran, our feet sinking into the spongy earth with each step. It was slow going, and time after time, one of us stumbled. Here and there, pools dotted the landscape with bodies visible in the black water. Some floated face down; others stared at us open-eyed. One or two began to reach out toward us imploringly. Before they could sit up, however, their eyelids sank down, and they returned to sleep.

“Who are they?” Mab panted. He reached for his notebook, but did not pull it out, as he was running.

“The Sullen and Slothful,” offered Mephisto. “People who didn’t do enough with their lives … you know, the kind of guys who go on welfare and drink beer and watch TV all day, never even lifting a finger to brush a fly from their nose? Guys who waste their lives, never doing any good for anyone but never really hurting anybody, either.”

“The Angel said Titus’s sin was sloth,” I commented wearily, hardly aware that I was speaking. The wonderful effect that recalling the angel had had upon my spirits had faded. In the same way that I had not been able to think of fear when she was present, I now could no longer remember the lightness of spirit that had accompanied her. I recalled that it had been present, but I could not remember what it had been like.

“Explains why Titus is here,” Gregor’s gravelly voice growled as he ran. Despite his serene expression, his face was red from the exertion. It was unlikely he had gotten much exercise while living in his Martian prison.

“Has anyone explained to Gregor about the demons in our staffs?” I gasped, pressing my hands against the stitch in my side. My legs felt like they were made of waterlogged wood, stiff and sluggish.

“The what in our staffs?” Gregor stopped short and gazed at the length of black ebony carved with blood red runes in his hand. While my mind cried out indignantly against the delay, I felt gratified to learn I was not the only one in the family who had been in the dark.

“Our staffs are powered by demons that Solomon stole from Hell,” Erasmus said. He, too, was panting. Taking advantage of Gregor’s pause, he leaned over and rested, his hands resting on his thighs. “Prolonged exposure to demons warps the human soul. Titus’s makes him slothful.”

“Why did Father give us these accursed things?” Gregor raised his arm as if to throw his from him. Erasmus lunged and grabbed the staff just as it left Gregor’s hand.

“Because someone had to keep them safe—as in: out of the hands of the Rulers of Hell!” Erasmus shouted. He shoved the length of ebony back at Gregor. “Have you gone crazy? Or would you like me to give this back to the Three Shadowed Ones for you?”

Gregor glared at Erasmus, his face red, his nostrils flared. For a moment, I feared he would strike him. Instead, he closed his eyes. Perhaps he was praying. When he opened them again, his face was calm, though still flushed. He retrieved his staff from Erasmus’s hand.

“Which demons?” he panted.

“Powerful entities,” Erasmus replied. “Princes and Dukes of the Pit, lords of their respective realms. Their loss was a heavy blow to the Inferno, and many a man has been saved due to their absence.”

“Indeed? I wish Father had told me.” Gregor’s husky voice was curt. He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, causing his shoulder-length hair to spread about him like a silky black mane. Continuing forward, he moved at a rapid walk. “Am I the only one he left in ignorance?”

I shook my head, taking big steps to keep up with him. “I only just found out myself.”

Erasmus smirked. “Father reserved many of his secrets for those of us who joined the
Orbis Suleimani.
”

The landscape grew more boggy, and it became impossible to run. Our feet disappeared into the springy mat of the rusty sphagnum moss. Hundreds of lakes and ponds covered the countryside, peat floating on the black water, thick and dark. Here and there, a hand or a knee protruded through the brown mat of dead vegetation. Where the ground grew firmer, we had to push our way through thorny brambles.

Insects swarmed thick above the surface of the bog. My dress repelled them, but they passed through my face and hands, which I found disconcerting. Their immateriality did not protect us from their unpleasant, high-pitched, buzzing drone. Erasmus tried to swat a few, annoyed by their noise. Irritated, he found he was able to catch one. He squished it between his fingers with a satisfied sigh.

Immediately, he was mobbed by swarms of mosquito-like creatures, all of which were able to draw his blood. Swearing, he activated his staff. The insects about him vanished. He swung his staff near the rest of us, and the irritating buzz ceased, leaving only the soft
whir
of the
Staff of Decay.

Erasmus’s staff was not the only thing preying upon the insects. The landscape was dotted by lank-leaved butterworts and sundews fringed with hundreds of slender tendrils, each tipped with a blood-red dot. Each was spotted with gnats, mosquitoes, and dragonflies, still writhing and alive but unable to escape the sticky grasp of the carnivorous plants. I shivered.

So tired …

My limbs felt heavy. My eyes were closing. If only I could rest and do this later, rest even the littlest bit …

With a hiss of determination, I threw off the suggestion of fatigue. I was not a person inclined to sloth. I could not have been C.E.O. of Prospero, Inc., had I not been willing to drive myself above and beyond what the next person would do. Certainly, I might be drowsy, but there was work to be done, siblings to be saved.

Around me, my traveling companions fought their own battles with fatigue. Gregor grimly strode forward, but Mab and Erasmus stumbled, and Mephisto walked with his eyes shut, his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man. I remembered that Erasmus had not slept in the Kronosaur.

“Help! Please, I beg you, help me!” A middle-aged man struggled to free himself from the bog, pushing against the spongy peat. He waved his arms imploringly. “You there! Please, I beg you!”

“Well … what do we do now?” Mab asked uneasily. He rubbed his eyes and the back of his neck, blinking tiredly.

“We keep going!” I snapped.

“Probably a trick anyway,” Mephisto replied airily. He yawned again and stretched. “Anyone up for nap? All that debauchery back on the island tired me out.”

“Fool!” Mab spat. “It’s this place! You told us yourself about the bodies sleeping beneath these waters. If you fall asleep here, you’ll never wake!” He glanced worriedly at the man struggling toward us. The stranger waved more frantically, but he was sinking. “I think he can see us. Shouldn’t we try to help him? What if he’s like those people Malagigi was able to rescue?”

“What if he’s an evil scum?” Mephisto countered.

“He does seem able to see us.” Erasmus took advantage of the conversation to pause. He leaned heavily upon his staff.

“I’m going after him,” Mab declared.

“Wait!” I cried. “Mab! We can’t afford to stop and help him! Besides, it could be a trick!”

“Ma’am, it’s a chance I’ll have to take. Until I caught that star, I didn’t know about my soul, so I was free to act as I pleased. But now I know. A soul is a big responsibility, Ma’am! What happens if I sully it?” Mab glanced at the dreary landscape around us and shuddered. “I can’t allow that to happen, Ma’am, so I’ve got to do the right thing, whatever presents itself. Leaving a helpless man to flounder in the black marshes of doom can’t be the right thing.”

“Oh, what the heck,” Erasmus muttered. “I’ll go.”

Erasmus strode forward. He moved quickly around the pool to where the man thrashed about, and offered his hand. The stranger in the bog reached out and caught it. To Erasmus’s surprise, he was able to grasp it. He pulled, and the man began to come free of the peat.

The sod around Erasmus and the stranger yawned open, revealing a pool beneath. From beneath the waters rose a gigantic sundew, its shiny yellowish petals speckled with thousands of slender tendrils, each glistening with what looked like a drop of blood. The stranger yanked back, catapulting Erasmus directly into the clutches of the flesh-eating plant.

The tendrils reached blindly toward Erasmus, sticking to his body. As he yelped and struggled, tearing the tendrils from his hands and clothes, the long petal itself rolled up like a yellowish tongue. Erasmus was now caught in the plant’s embrace, wrapped up like a living hors d’oeuvre.

“Told you it was a trick,” Mephisto’s tired yet cheerful voice sang out as he tapped his staff, calling up reinforcements.

It flashed through my mind what a great relief it would be never to be teased by Erasmus again. We had to save Theo. We could not pause to rescue another family member who had gone astray.

Immediately, I rejected such nonsense, but not before Erasmus caught sight of my expression. As he disappeared beneath the black waters, a sneer of ironic amusement came over his features.