The Scarlet Gospels (27 page)

“Are we not on a road of some kind?” Norma asked him.

Knotchee lowered his voice to keep his reply from reaching the Hell Priest's ears.

“The only road we're following is the one in the Lord Tempter's head. And if he loses his way we're all dead.”

“That's not very comforting,” said Norma.

This silenced the conversation for a long while. When Knotchee took up talking again it was because finally there was a change in the view. Now, however, what he was seeing wasn't so easy to describe, and he fumbled for words. There were huge pieces of wreckage, he said, strewn across the desert, the remains of machines the likes of which he had never seen before. To his soldier's eye it looked as though a war had been fought here, though he freely admitted he could see no killing purpose to which these vast toppled devices could have been put. And if there were demons who might have died during this war he had no way of knowing, since there was not so much as a single bone underfoot.

“Do demons have ghosts?” Norma asked him.

“Of course,” Knotchee replied. “There will always be those that won't let go of who they were.”

“If this had been a battlefield, there'd be ghosts wandering around.”

“Perhaps they are.”

“I'd know if there were,” Norma replied. “Ghosts and I have a way of crossing paths. And I don't sense them here. Not one. So if this was a battlefield, it was one where all the dead went to a contented rest. And that would be a first for me.”

“Then I have no more ideas,” the soldier said.

Despite Norma's encouragement, the descriptions grew steadily sparser. But as she was riding on his shoulders, her arms wrapped around his neck, it wasn't hard for Norma to read the signals that were rising off the soldier's body. His skin was getting clammier, his pulse quickening, his breath too. He was afraid. Norma knew better than to impugn his masculinity by attempting to reassure him. She just held tight and kept her peace. The wind rose for a time, its gusts so strong they would have thrown her over if she'd been on her own.

And then, just as the rising velocity of the wind started to cause Knotchee to stagger, the storm died away completely. There was no slow diminishing of the force. One moment, they were being struck by gust upon gust; the next, the wind seemed to have died away completely.

“What happened?” Norma whispered to Knotchee.

The sound of her own voice gave her some answer to the mystery. The wind hadn't suddenly stopped blowing; they had simply stepped out of it into what sounded, to judge by the noise of their feet on pebbles and her words, like some kind of passageway, the walls of which corrupted the sounds, stretching them or slicing them into slivers.

“The wasteland's gone,” he said. “The stories are true. It's all folding up around us, and we're going to get folded up in it.” He started to turn around, his breath coming in panicky gasps.

“Don't you dare,” Norma said, catching hold of one of his ears and twisting it as hard as she could.

It was the kind of thing an irritated parent might do to a troublesome child, and perhaps for that reason it gained the soldier's attention. He stopped in mid-turn.

“That hurts.”

“Good. It's supposed to. Now listen to me: I don't know you from a warm hole in a cold corpse, but there's been enough bloodshed already without adding your body to the heap. Wherever he's taking us, he knows what he's doing.”

“If it were possible, I would be humbled,” the Hell Priest remarked from quite a distance ahead. It was obvious he'd heard every word Norma and the soldier had shared. “You're right, of course. I haven't come this far to deliver us into oblivion. I have such sights to show you. Soon, you will have answers to questions you have never even dared to ask.”

The words cut through Knotchee's panic. His heartbeat ebbed, his skin dried, and he picked up his stride once more. And it was just as the Hell Priest had promised. After thirty or forty yards, the passageway and its confines opened up.

“What do you see?” Norma asked.

There was a long pause. Finally, Knotchee said, “It's so big I'm not sure—”

“Set her down,” the Hell Priest said.

Knotchee did as instructed. The pebbles were extremely uncomfortable beneath Norma's bony behind. But within a few minutes of sitting down there was a sound of running feet, off to her right, and shouts of what surely was adoration from those who were approaching.

Knotchee had walked off, leaving Norma to interpret what happened next by the sound alone, which she was used to doing. She guessed that perhaps a dozen or so creatures had come along the beach to pay their respects to the Hell Priest. She heard several dropping down onto the pebbles, whether kneeling or lying she couldn't tell, to demonstrate their reverence, their shouts subdued now to sibilant whispers. Only one voice rose above the worshipful mutterings, that of an aged female who addressed the Hell Priest in a language Norma had no knowledge of.

“Avocitar? Lazle. Lazle matta zu?”

“Ether psiatyr,” the Hell Priest replied.

“Summatum solt, Avocitar,” the woman said. And then, apparently addressing the others, “Pattu! Pattu!”

“Pick up your baggage, soldier,” the Hell Priest said. “The Azeel are prepared for our arrival. They've readied our vessels.”

As soon as Knotchee hoisted Norma onto his back he said, “I'll be glad to leave this place.” Then more quietly, “And gladder to leave these freaks.”

Norma waited until the trek along the beach was under way and she heard the sound of feet on the pebbles to cover her questions before she dared ask her question “What do you mean by ‘freaks'?”

“They're inbred,” Knotchee said. “Can't you smell them? They're disgusting. When this is over, I'm going to bring a squad out here and clean this filth up.”

“But they're demons, like you, aren't they?”

“Not like me. They're misshapen. Heads too big, bodies too small. All of them naked. It's an insult to their heritage. It makes me sick. They must be stomped out.”

“What heritage?”

“The Azeel were the first generation of angels after the fall, the sons and daughters of those who had been cast down with our lord Lucifer. Theirs were the hands that built Pyratha. And then, when it was finished, and our lord Lucifer pronounced it good, they went with him to their own land, which he had made for them as reward for their labors. And having gone into their secret country, they were never seen again. Now I know why.”

“And where is Lucifer? Does he have his own secret country?”

“He's been gone many, many generations. As for where he is now, it isn't my place to ask, nor is it my right to know. The Lord of Lords is with us every moment, and in every place.”

“Even now?”

“In every moment. In every place,” the soldier replied. “Now unless you want to walk from here, let this subject sleep.”

Norma and the soldier continued in silence, walking along the beach as the Azeel led the Hell Priest and his entourage to their boats.

The Azeel had started chanting now, the chant's rhythmic power, building phrase upon phrase, changed with obsessive devotion. The chant turned Norma's thoughts to pulp; she couldn't hold two notions together.

“They need you to go to the boat, Norma,” Knotchee said. “Can I go with her?” he asked somebody, and was given the answer he wanted. “I'll sit in front of you.”

Knotchee lifted Norma up off his shoulders and gently deposited her on her wooden seat. She reached out to the left and right of her, running her fingers over the carved beams. The boat did not feel particularly stable. Even though they were in the shallows, it rolled alarmingly whenever someone climbed aboard.

“Where is
he
?” she asked Knotchee.

“In the first boat,” he replied. “They carved him a kind of throne.”

“How many boats are there?” Norma asked.

“Three,” answered Knotchee. “All carved with angels' wings running the length of each side of each boat. Every barb and vein of every feather, perfectly carved. I never saw anything so beautiful in my life. Truly we are blessed to bear witness to such events.”

“Funny,” said Norma. “I've never been happier to be blind.”

The old demon woman who had first addressed them spoke once again:

“When you go, I start big chanting, to conceal any noise you make from Quo'oto.”

The name brought barely audible rumblings from the Azeel who were in the boats, desperate little prayers, Norma guessed, to keep Quo'oto away, whatever it was.

“All of you,” the demon went on, “not to say a word until you getting to Last Place. Quo'oto hears well.”

The observation was echoed in whispers by the entire assembly.

“Quo'oto hears well. Quo'oto hears well. Quo'oto hears well.”

The old demon woman said, “Be wise. Be silent. Be safe. We staying here and making like a noise that will drive Quo'oto deeper.”

The boats were pushed off from the shore, their hulls scraping on stones for a few seconds before they floated free. Then those who had the oars, one of whom was Knotchee, began to paddle, and if the strength of the wind against Norma's face was anything to judge by, they were skimming through the water at a tremendous pace.

Norma could hear the bow of the boat behind them cutting the water and very occasionally the sound of one of the oars striking one of the waves from the boat in front, but otherwise the first portion of the journey, which took perhaps half an hour, went without incident.

Soon after, however, Norma felt a sudden drop in temperature, and her skin began to crawl with gooseflesh. She could feel it pressing against her face, and chilling her lungs when she next drew breath. Despite this, the boats continued on their expeditious paths through the water, sometimes coming out of a patch of mist for a few teasing moments of warmth, only to plunge back into the bitter air before Norma could even stop her teeth from chattering. The noise she was making was loud enough for one of her fellow passengers to pass forward a piece of canvas that Knotchee placed between her teeth to silence her.

Finally the mist began to thin a little, and then, as the boats came to shore, suddenly it was gone. That's when Knotchee spoke:

“Oh demonation,” said Knotchee. “It's beautiful.”

“What is?” said Norma, leaning closer to Knotchee, but he gave no reply. “Tell me!” Norma said. “What? What do you see?”

*   *   *

In the span of his life, which had been, to date, far longer than any human life, the Hell Priest had witnessed a great deal that would have cracked lesser minds wide open like fumbled eggs. He once visited a continent in a remote dimension that had contained a single species of mottle-shelled creatures the size of roadkill mongrels, their only food one another or, if pressed to it, their excremental remains. Truly, the Hell Priest was no stranger to the abhorrent. And yet, now that he was in the place where he'd longed to be for many years—the place that had conjured in his mind's eye waking dream upon waking dream—why, he wondered, did he find himself nostalgic for the presence of those corrupted beasts who had only earned his contempt in earlier times?

As soon as he begged the question, he knew the answer, though there wasn't a living soul in Hell (or out of it, for that matter) to whom he would have confessed the truth, which was simply this: now that he was finally here in the Unholy of Unholies, where he had ached for too long to be, he was afraid. He had good reason.

His boat had come ashore, and, fixing his eyes only on the structure, he went to it, like a moth to flame. And now he stood, buried in the oppressive shadow of an edifice so secret, so vast, so complex, that there was nothing in Hell or on Earth (even in those most guarded of chambers in the Vatican, which had been built by men of such genius the chambers defied the laws of physics and were vastly larger on the inside than on the out) that had any hope of comparison with the place where the Hell Priest now stood. The island upon which the structure had been built was called Yapora Yariziac (literally, the Last of All Possibilities), and the name was no lie.

The Hell Priest was finally here, at the end of his journey, with so many betrayals and bloodlettings marking his path, and he actually found himself assailed with doubts. Suppose all his hopes of revelation were confounded? Suppose the Archfiend's majesty had not left any mark on this place for the Cenobite to draw power and understanding from? The sole reason the Hell Priest had come here was to stand in the last testament to Lucifer's genius.

He had expected to feel Lucifer's presence in him, filling up the void in him and, in so doing, showing him the secret shape of his soul. But as it stood, he felt nothing. He'd read somewhere that the makers of Chartres Cathedral, the masons and the carvers of the great fa
ç
ade, had not chiseled their names onto the finished work as an act of humility for the Creator in Whose name the cathedral had been raised.

Was it possible, he wondered now, that Lucifer had done something similar? Actively erasing the echoes of his presence in the name of a higher power? He was suddenly agonizingly aware of the nails that had been hammered into his skull, their points pressing into the clotted jelly of his brain. He had always understood that this portion of his anatomy, being nerveless, could not give him pain. But he felt pain now: bleak, meaningless, stupefying pain.

“This is not right…” he said.

There was no echo off the walls of the edifice; they had consumed his words just as they had his hope. He felt something stirring in his belly, then rising through his tormented body, growing in force as it ascended. He had cultivated a distance from his own despair over the years, but it met him at this place and would never again be put out of his sight.