Prospero Regained (44 page)

“Victor over what?” I gestured at our horrible surroundings. “This?”

“You visited my Infernal Milan. Have you ever seen a finer kingdom?” My uncle’s eyes glittered with pride and something else, as if he was rejoicing in having won away from us a kingdom he thought was ours. “Or a handsomer people. Oh, I grant you that your Theophrastus has done it a poor turn, but I am assured it will soon be restored as it should be. And, tonight, I finally realize my long-sought dream! Lilith has promised that mine shall be the hand that kills Prospero!”

He could not see it! The city we had seen with the blood and fungus and horror was invisible to him. In his deluded eyes, Infernal Milan was as beautiful as real Milan, with healthy and prosperous citizens.

My heart ached. My uncle was a murderer and a practitioner of the dark arts. He had set Erasmus and me against each other, nearly causing the downfall of our family and of the entire human race. And yet, in the end, he was still family. A bone-freezing cold, worse than the biting wind of the glaciers of hell, froze my limbs. I hated the demons for what they had done to him.

Stepping forward, I put my hand on his shoulder. My hand sank into him, but it had the desired effect.

Uncle Antonio stumbled backward as he beheld his procession, crying wildly, “What horror is this?”

“These? These are your subjects.” I spoke forcefully. “You kingdom looked just as dilapidated, even before Theo destroyed it! These followers are what you have gained in return for betraying your kin. Was it worth it, Uncle Antonio? Was this worth betraying your family? Was it worth Ferdinand’s life?”

Uncle Antonio stared around in revulsion, gasping in horror as his hand came in contact with his damaged face. His words barely escaped his horror-strangled throat. “She tricked me! Lilith has tricked me. No! It cannot be!”

His eyes then focused upon me. “It must be you who is tricking me. You sly daughter of a witch! You shall never be a Sibyl, you stupid girl. I have seen to that! No woman who is consumed with hatred for her own brother will ever feel the grand compassion required of Sibyls! Thanks to Queen Lilith and her Unicorn Hunters, Eurynome shall never have another Sibyl—not you, not anyone!—and the elves shall pay their tithe to Hell forever!”

He slapped me across the face. It did no damage, of course. His hand passed through me, but the sensation was unpleasant. My wings flared more brightly. Behind me, I heard the soft hum of Theo warming up his staff. But Mephisto acted first.

Bellowing, he swelled up. His skin turned dark. His clothes ripped. Dozens of sharp curling horns sprouted from his head and wings sprang from his back. Shaking off Gregor’s hand, he pushed Gregor and me behind him. Then, he spread his enormous bat wings, shielding all of us.

“Prince Mephistopheles!” My uncle’s damaged face trembled with awe. “But you cannot be!”

“Finally. Someone has recognized me!” My brother the demon took a menacing step forward. He raised a jet hand tipped with claws of glowing ruby.

Uncle Antonio threw his arms before his face, crying, “Lilith! Aid me!”

Leaping back into his sedan chair, he gestured frantically for his bearers to lift him.

“Run!” he cried. “Quickly, my people, run!”

The very notion of this large ponderous procession fleeing was a farce. They were surrounded on all sides by uneven ice floes. With a single beat of his great bat wings, Mephistopheles could have descended upon Uncle Antonio and his entire entourage, if he had wished to. He did not. Instead, as the procession turned and darted away, their disturbing music even more discordant as they rushed to put distance between us and them, my brother the demon swiveled and fixed his glowing sapphire eyes upon us.

“Come, Brethren, we must flee! Our uncle has called the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

The rest of us, except for Erasmus and Theo, ran toward the mammoth, but Theo raised the
Staff of Devastation
and pointed it steadily at Mephistopheles’s heart. “Tell me why I shouldn’t send you to Kingdom Come as well, Demon?”

Rushing back, I jumped in front of Mephistopheles, spreading my arms. “Theo! It’s Mephisto!”

Theo scowled. “Miranda. It’s a demon.”

“But that demon is our brother!”

“Then, Abaddon was right. There is a traitor in our family,” Theo said.

“Yes!” I screamed, pointing at the fleeing crowd. “It’s Uncle Antonio!”

Mephistopheles crossed his great black arms. “Shoot if you wish, Good Brother, and I will go to the Kingdom of which you speak, in which case, I will not be of much use to anyone down here, will I?”

“A demon? To Heaven?” Gregor came back to stand beside the fallen Erasmus, whose blood was still seeping from his lacerated hands.

Mephistopheles swiveled his horned head and fixed his sapphire eyes on Gregor. “You think because the Hellwinds set me in the Swamp of Uncleanness, that my end will be that unpleasant place? My soul is weighted with lust, it is true, but my sins are not so heavy as to draw me Below. Purgatory, maybe, but no lower. I am Heaven’s servant through and through.” My brother smiled, showing sharp white fangs. “You may consider me a double agent.”

“Impossible!” Theo insisted. “Don’t listen to him. He’s trying some kind of trick.”

“Shall I tell you how it came about?” Mephistopheles asked. “After I used the Seeing Sphere of Horus the Wise”—he hefted the crystal ball—“to achieve a position in Hell, I found myself upon a downward spiral. For it was not enough to gain a position in Hell, one must be consistently sinning and showing one’s badge of crimes and ills in order to maintain one’s rank. Very quickly, I found myself within traps from which I could not extricate myself. My clever plan had proved foolish and empty. I was lost.

“And yet, despite the crimes I was committing, my allegiance was still to Heaven. I wanted to do good, to help mankind, and, most of all, to protect my family. The next time the angels harrowed Hell, I threw myself down upon my face before them and asked for forgiveness.

“They raised me up and took me to another of their order, a five-winged Virtue, whom they said was responsible for my soul. She sat enthroned upon a scallop shell, with crowns of cloud and sea spray hovering above her brow. In her lap, the way a mundane king might hold a scepter, she held the earth. Gazing upon it, I could see the motion of the clouds and the tides.

“It burned me to be near her, and the light of her halo was fearsome to behold, for it was too bright for my eyes. Yet, I stood my ground, waiting to hear what fate she held in store for me.

“In a voice like unto a living flute, she greeted me as one of Solomon’s Heirs. Those who dwelled Above, she explained, had great trouble approaching those who dwelt in Hell. Either the damned were unable to see them, or the angels were too bright for their sinful eyes to look upon. However, the angels, ever vigilant, have not turned aside from their duty to guard and lead mankind.

“In order to aid those whom they could not reach themselves, the angels employed emissaries, individuals who have not yet left their sins behind, who can be seen and heard by those below. The Brotherhood of Hope is one such effort.

“The angel gave me a choice: I could depart, leaving my infernal princedom behind and return to the world of the daystar. Or, I could remain a Prince of Hell and serve the angels, addressing those who could not hear them directly upon their behalf. The choice was mine.

“I struggled with this choice. On the one hand, I wished to serve the angels and undo some of the damage I had done. On the other hand, my duty to my family weighed keenly upon me. When I was Below, I was unable to protect them, to watch over them—and some of them dearly needed watching over!” Mephistopheles’s great sapphire eyes rested upon myself and Erasmus. “So, I sought a boon. I asked that if I agreed to become their servant, and spend some of my time below, doing their bidding, that they would undertake to aid me in my effort to protect my family.

“The angel agreed. When my family was in danger, she promised, angels would warn Theophrastus, who—of all my siblings—could hear their celestial voices the most clearly.”

“M-me?” Theo’s arms holding the staff sagged. His jaw literally hung open. “You mean the Voice that tells me when family members are in danger? All these years, I’ve been listening to the voice of an angel sent by Mephisto? Mephisto!!”

Theo stood a moment longer, stunned with wonder and confusion. Then, he fiddled with the control collar of his staff, separated it back into two pieces, and stuck it back over his shoulder.

“So that’s how you knew when to come rescue Miss Miranda!” Mab exclaimed. He had come up behind me. “I remember Mephisto said something about it having been angels. But then Mephisto says a lot of things.”

“Mephisto?” Theo murmured for a third time, flabbergasted.

Caliban came crunching across the snow. He walked up and laid a big meaty hand kindly upon the demon’s shoulder. “Time to come back to earth, Master.”

Putting his hands behind his back, Caliban took a deep breath and sang:

The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,

The gunner and his mate

Lov’d Mall, Meg and Marian and Margery,

But none of us car’d for Kate;

For she has a tongue with a tang,

Would cry to a sailor, Go hang!

Mephistopheles cocked his head to listen to the singing. As he listened, a playful smile shanghaied his demon face. He grew smaller and pinker until he was his normal self again, puzzled and blinking. Lifting his voice, Mephisto joined in, singing the song, made immortal by
The Tempest,
the song he had been singing when Mab and I first encountered him in Chicago:

She lov’d not the savor of tar nor of pitch,

Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch:

Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Cornelius came tapping across the ice and joined in the song. Logistilla did, too. She knelt beside Erasmus, hugging his shoulders. When he lifted his head, much surprised, she wiped his face with Ulysses’s handkerchief, which she pulled from her sleeve.

“There, there, Dear Brother,” she cooed. “We all have bad centuries now and then.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

The Staff of Wisdom

As we began lumbering forward on mammoth-back, moving across the glacier, a great voice cried out: “
Beware! The Queen of Air and Darkness approaches!
”

Immediately, Titus tapped his staff on the sole of his shoe; black fog smelling of newly lit matches billowed from the
Staff of Darkness.
Mephisto signaled for the mammoth to kneel. Once we were on the ice, he sent it away, so that we did not need to hide it as well.

We crouched together, peering up nervously. Before the dark cloud thickened, we caught glimpses of Lilith in her horrible chariot flying across the gray sky.

“Whose voice was that?” Erasmus whispered urgently. “Who warned us just now?”

No one answered, but Caliban crouched near me. I could make out his silhouette in the green light shed by my wings. From the sounds he made, I suspected he was hiding his club behind his back.

We knelt on the snow, shivering in the darkness, though there was an emerald glow around my wings and the top of Logistilla’s staff. Theo crawled up beside me and pulled me against him, so that my head rested on his shoulder. He rubbed my back fondly, his face angled up, as if he were straining to catch sight of any threat through the darkness. Mab sat nearby, flipping his lead pipe in his hand. I could hear the
swack, thlip, swack
as he caught it, released it, and caught it again.

Overhead, some flying thing screeched, followed by a rush of wings. We held our breath. Should Lilith detect that our cloud was somehow different from the other black fogs, we would be sitting ducks, unable to see her coming.

Twice, then three times, the screeches and flapping grew near, as if the Queen of Air and Darkness were circling the valley. We waited, silent and motionless, except for Ulysses, who gave a low moan of fear. I wondered if one of our siblings had taken away his staff, as he did not teleport away.

Eventually, the flapping retreated.

“Is the coast clear?” Caliban asked.

“
Lilith has departed
,” boomed the great voice.

I recognized the voice. It was the voice that had cried out during the battle by the Bridge over the River Styx, warning us of the corrosive properties of Focalor’s armor.

Titus rapped his staff against the stone, turning it off. The darkness would soon disperse in the breeze.

“Yahoo, Lilith’s gone! She doesn’t know where we are, nana nana boo boo!” sang Mephisto. I could hear his feet tapping on the stones as he danced.

A new voice spoke out of the darkness, soft as silk, sending sensual ripples from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. “I shall tell her though … unless you return what should be mine.”

“Seir of the Shadows!” Mab hissed.

I drew my fighting fan and leapt to my feet. Around me, I could hear the others pulling their weapons and readying themselves. Theo grabbed my arm and maneuvered me behind him, so that we stood back to back, facing in opposite directions. Mab stepped into the emerald glow cast by my wings and joined us. Now, the three of us stood with our backs to one another, facing outward.

“Go away, Inkie!” shouted Mephisto. “Nothing here belongs to you.”