Tithe to Tartarus Page 10

  The chamber walls were umber, auburn, fulvous, citrine, and translucent. To every side were panels, panes, niches, and walls of amber, reaching from roof to floor, every hue of yellow from goldenrod to lemon. The amber walls were carved into nooks and shelves and arabesques. Bound chests and caskets made of glass or amber stood there, the coins and bars of gold, rare wood, bolts of cloth, or phials of essence visible through the smoky yellow. Also on the shelves, or dangling from each arm of the chandelier, a glowing, miniature winged girl in a bottle was weeping.

  Yumiko redoubled her pace, hoping to see Elfine. Ither stepped forward to enter the treasure chamber, but Batraal slowed his steps so that Ither was ahead.

  Batraal whirled and drew his greatsword. Batraal was coated for a moment with many small sparks of light. Yumiko had seen such lights gather around Elfine just before the girl dwindled to miniature size. But the Nephilim did not shrink. He grew. First, he was ten, then fifteen, then twenty feet tall. His brigantine and broadsword grew with him as he grew. The light from the open door behind him cast his black shadow across the gossamer bridge.

  Yumiko, caught by surprise, coming too quickly, skidded to a halt and stepped back a step. The gossamer trembled under her footstep, and she realized how she had been discovered.

  The Nephilim cried, “Your arrows I know! That you have the Ring of Mists I know! Your weakness I know!”

  Batraal lifted his sword in both hands overhead and then raised his head and stared into the blade. Yumiko could see his ice blue eyes reflected in the mirror-bright blade. She saw them focus on her.

  The gigantic warrior called. “I see you!”

  6. Shooting and Plummeting

  Behind Batraal, she saw Althjof and Ither had unbound the Cloak of Mists from Garlot and were hurrying to put their unconscious master into the fluid boiling in the crystal orb, which she realized must be the Crystal Cauldron of Youth.

  A ladder of three oversized amber steps rose next to the cauldron, and the youth and the dwarf were wrestling the limp, heavy body up them. They pulled him up the first step.

  But she saw something no one else was in position to see: a black mouse was in the treasure chamber, just under the amber steps. Streams of black smoke were issuing from its tiny mouth. The thin thread of black mist was rising up, looking like a rip in the tapestry of the universe.

  Through that rip a pale king with empty eyesockets protruded an arm and a leg, as if he were stepping out from the curtain severing seen from unseen. She knew him: about his neck hung a hunting horn, and his surcoat showed the sign of a pale winter tree.

  Ither and Althjof pulled their master up the second step.

  And the pale king was putting his hand into and through the crystal side of the cauldron. The hand and arm passed through the substance as easily as a beam of moonlight through glass, without touching it. Scars at his wrist, such as suicides are wont to wear, now parted, and a fluid blacker than night entered the bright fluid boiling in the cauldron.

  All this she saw in the moment it took the Nephilim to grow in size, to raise his great blade, to peer into its reflection, and to see her.

  “Wait!” she cried. “The cauldron is poisoned! Garlot is in danger!”

  Ither and Althjof pulled Garlot up the third step. She drew an arrow and nocked it.

  “Throw down your bow!” roared the Nephilim. “I am Batraal son of Barkayal, who taught man how to observe the stars, and a daughter of Cain. I am of the elder line of Adam and by rights should rule. Throw down your bow, Winged Vengeance, or die!”

  All the shrill voices of the girls in the bottles rose up in a clamor when the name of Winged Vengeance was spoken, crying and shrieking. Ither and Althjof, hearing the commotion, did not look up, but redoubled their efforts, hastening to plunge Garlot into the boiling fluid.

  Yumiko realized that no one there could see the ghost. Perhaps they could not see the dark and ghostly blood he was shedding into the liquid boiling in the cauldron.

  She called out, “I am not Winged Vengeance! Your master is about to die!” But the first three words of what she said was lost in the uproar, and, unfortunately, the last six were clearly heard.

  But at the same time, she drew two arrows from her quiver and in one motion knelt and nocked and shot the first, turned the bow sidewise, went prone, and shot the second.

  Both shafts passed between the legs of the twenty-foot-tall giant and went through the open door to the treasure chamber.

  The first struck arrow Althjof, the dwarf, in the leg and passed through it. He stumbled and fell into the cauldron with a splash. Ither, unbalanced and scalded by flying water, lost his footing, but he fell backward down the amber stepladder, bringing Garlot’s bleeding body with him. This first arrow was not red, but had a bodkin head.

  The huge blade of Batraal swung. He missed her head, perhaps because she moved, or perhaps because he had no other mirror to use to keep her in his sight. Or perhaps he was not aiming for her at all. The blade cleaved neatly through the gossamer surface, and it parted. The half on which he stood remained rigid and supported his weight. The half under her feet collapsed and disintegrated, suddenly no more solid than a puffy cloud.

  The second arrow flew swift and sure a mere inch above the floor and struck the black mouse through. The mouse was struck, but it was the shadow figure of the dead king who fell back, a shaft protruding from his chest. Ghost and arrow together shimmered like objects seen under rippling water and evaporated.

  This was a white arrow, called haya. It was male, the first ghost arrow, and it spun clockwise—deasil—when shot. In her hand was otoya, the female, the second ghost arrow, which spun counterclockwise—widdershins—when shot. To her credit, it did not fall from her hand when she fell.

  It is startling how fast a body falls. To Yumiko, it seemed as if the Nephilim was yanked upward like a puppet on an unseen string more swiftly than an ascending rocket. Without losing her grip on the bow shaft or arrow, she twisted the ring sharply, making herself weightless, and shrugged her wings into place. But now she was visible. Her speed of descent slowed, thanks to air resistance, but she was still traveling down.

  She could not fold the bow away while it was strung. She slung the bow over her shoulder. A flick of her right wrist slapped her wirepoon pistol into her palm. She fired, but the grapnel rebounded from the slick surface of the marble blocks of the cyclopean masonry of the vast and bottomless chasm down which she fell.

  Did she have time for one more shot? She steadied the pistol in both hands and aimed at the Nephilim, hoping to grapple the gossamer bridge on which he stood. The grapnel penetrated the transparent fabric of the bridge, but the tall man knelt and swept his sword. With a high-pitched shock of metallic noise, the wire parted under the blow, leaving the grapnel head behind.

  She was falling only as fast as an autumn leaf, but falling she was, and with no way to climb up. No convenient warm updraft was likely to rise from below and give her altitude. She yanked a pair of needle-nosed pliers out of her belt and stared at them. “No climbing claws!” she muttered. “What kind of superheroine ever leaves her climbing claws behind?”

  She had only a moment before the Nephilim, the door, and the two small bottles burning like lamps would be too far above her and out of range. She and all her gear were weightless at the moment. She was not sure how this would affect performance. But she had in hand something with a much longer range than the wirepoon pistol.

  She kicked her legs so that she was supine in midair, put her feet up, caught the bow shaft between sole and heel, nocked a judo-point arrow, and shot.

  This time, she aimed not at the wall or the warrior but at the lamp. A judo-point head is blunt but has hooks to snag the surface it hits. In this case, Yumiko used such a head hoping it would snag the glass it shattered, slowing its speed and doing no harm to the girl inside the bottle.

  A moment later, bright as a falling star, a brunette with wings like an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, wearing a brief and sl
eeveless tunic of matching yellow and black, came speeding down the shaft and landed on the nose of Yumiko’s mask.

  7. A Small Boon

  “I am Fayline,” she said with a curtsey, fluttering her wings to keep her footing on the nose of the mask of the slowing-falling girl. “Daughter of Lorilla of the band of Zurline of Burzee. You have freed me! Ask of me what boon I may grant.”

  “I would like to go back up, please,” said Yumiko.

  “Up? Up where?”

  “From where I fell.”

  “When?”

  Yumiko was puzzle. “I do not understand.”

  “You want to go up to the spot from which you fell. When did you fall?”

  “Just now. A moment ago.”

  “Ah! That I can do!” So saying, the fairy girl grew until she was the size of a doll. A frown was on her face. “Or maybe I cannot do. You seem rather gigantic, and you smell like the realm of woe. I cannot turn into a bird any who bears this scent.”

  “Appearances can deceive,” said Yumiko. “I am light as a feather at the moment.”

  “Ah! Your weight is in the land of the dead! That is a clever place to stow it.”

  And she wrapped both arms about the nose of Yumiko’s mask and beat her wings furiously, shedding many sparks and glittering motes as she did. Slowly, but surely, Yumiko’s descent halted. For a moment she hung while Fayline strove. And then the tiny impulse from the girl no larger than a dove prevailed, and Yumiko began drifting upward.

  Higher they came. The Nephilim was kneeling on the gossamer, but he had sheathed his terrible sword. The fairy girl tugging on Yumiko’s grinning fox-mask made her clear to see against the backdrop of unrelieved darkness.

  Yumiko said, “I think we should avoid him. Follow near the wall and get above him.”

  The fairy laughed. “Ah! No! That is not what you asked! The spot from which you fell is even with his toe. There is no bridge there now, of course.”

  “You are not willing to carry me a few yards higher than I asked?”

  The doll-sized girl wagged a tiny finger. “Tsk! Tsk! You could have used different words if you wanted something different. I thought you wanted me to carry you all the way back to Sarras or the hospital room window where the holy saint put you. This is easier! I would have liked to turn you into a bird if you forgot to ask beforehand to be able to turn back. That would have been funny, too!”

  “Funny?” asked Yumiko, incredulous. “What of gratitude? I saved you!”

  “I am granting you your boon! You get one! Just one! And as soon as I am done, I can forget all gratitude and the pain and danger I was in and flit away free! You do not think I am cursed with memory, like an elf, do you? My ancestors discovered how to live without regret, here in the land of tears, among the exiled children of Eve. It is like your amnesia!”

  “Exiled? From where?”

  “Don’t remember, don’t know, don’t care.”

  “From Heaven?”

  Now the little face crumpled in sudden, sharp sadness, and Fayline cried, “Why did you say that? Why did you say such a terrible thing?”

  At this point, Yumiko came back to the spot in midair where the gossamer bridge had been. Fayline flew away without a backward glance, straight up the shaft.

  The Nephilim, frowning, stepped to the broken end of the remaining half of the gossamer bridge, measuring the distance to Yumiko with his eyes.

  8. Another Small Boon

  Through the legs of Batraal the Nephilim, Yumiko saw that the amber doors behind him had been pulled shut.

  Yumiko was not used to shooting the bow while weightless. She stiffened her cloak and spread it, and her legs rotated slowly until her spine was pointed at the target. She wanted to keep the line of the shot near her center of mass. She flexed her spine and craned her neck like someone shooting an arrow directly overhead.

  The blunt arrow flew sure and true into the other bottle by the door, shattering it. A moment later a glittering fairy girl was hanging in midair before Yumiko’s eyes, and she curtseyed politely. Her wings and tunic were patterned like a Monarch butterfly.

  “I am Luel, daughter of Ereol of the band of Ozga the Rose Princess of Oogaboo. Ask of me what boon…”

  “Without maiming or slaying me or anyone, immediately open as wide as they are designed to be opened the amber doors there leading to the treasure chamber of Garlot if that is where Elfine daughter of Iolanthe is kept, and keep them open until the moment I say otherwise, to allow me to shoot arrows into more of the bottles currently kept there and free more captives.”

  Luel smiled charmingly, clapping her little hands with joy. “That I can do!”

  Just then, Batraal gleamed with a firefly swarms of lights, swelled up to twice his size, reached out, and caught Yumiko between his palms. She threw a knife into his nose, which made him laugh, since, at his size, this was smaller than the sting of a bee to him. Then the pellets of tear gas and pepper spray hidden in the slots of the hilt of the knife ignited, and an immense volume of noxious gas erupted directly into all the nasal and throat cavities of his head. When he yelled in pain, tear gas blew from his throat. He jerked his hands toward his burning face, releasing her. Now she was tumbling in an irregular spin, flying toward the black wall with no weight but great momentum.

  Luel, still smiling brightly, landed on the back of Yumiko’s glove, clung there, reached out, took the Ring of Mists in both hands, and twisted it sharply. The ring darkened from pewter to cast iron to shining onyx, and the face in the intaglio went from drowsy to sleepy to dead, a corpse face with lips sewn shut.

  Yumiko felt eyes on her, many gazes filled with hate. The sensation was far more potent than she had felt it before: she was paralyzed, unable to move.

  Luel twisted the ring yet again. The shining onyx ring turned black as soot, and the face collapsed into a skull. The mist around Yumiko was thick and dark, so she lost all sight of the Nephilim, the amber door, the gossamer bridge, the stark and smooth walls. She was nowhere. She could see nothing.

  9. Nonbeing

  And within the nothing was a deeper nothing, visible like black against gray. The shapes of dead men, their empty eyesockets turned toward her, empty mouths gaping in mirthless hunger, painful hunger, infinite hunger. They envied her for being alive. They wanted life, but never, not for eternity, not ever would the smallest drop of it be theirs. It was a terrible, burning, thirsting envy, a malice beyond madness. They lusted for her life and envied her for having it. There were dozens here, scores, hundreds, reaching out toward her.

  Below and behind these dark shapes was a figure even darker, as if darkness could turn from a mere absence of light to a positive force that destroyed light. The ghosts were the size of men and fluttered like bats in the gloom. This one was the size of a tower, or a hill, and the featherless wings that opened from its shoulders were greater than the sails of a mighty ship. They were the wings of the leviathan.

  And beyond and beneath this tower of darkness were hills and mountains of shapes vaster and deeper, leviathans wallowing, not in the sea, but the depths of uttermost blackness darker than the bottom of a sea trench and at a pressure even more massive and relentless.

  Yumiko heard a voice she had heard before. She had heard this voice in the lowest vaults of Wilcolac’s establishment, where he conducted his black sorceries. It was the voice of Empousa. Yumiko heard it in her mind, not her ear, and her mind went as if deaf with fear. The little vixen we seek is there, plain and clear to see. After her! Upon her! Bring the ring to Wilcolac, damned spirits!

  Twittering and screaming like bats, with many a jerking, angular, and ugly movement of flying and falling, tossing their limbs this way and that, the dead by scores and myriads came through the darkness toward her.

  Chapter Eight: The Treasure Room

  1. Amber Chamber

  Then came light.

  The world turned solid around her, as firm as a mother’s arms about a baby. Warmth was here, and brightness, and beau
ty of three dimensions, and the solemn symphony of her living heart, beating a rapid tattoo, proving time was passing once more. Even the beautiful sensation known as sound was here again, coming in the way nature intended, through the ear, not like a needle thrust directly into the brain. But the sound itself was not very pretty. It took her a moment to realize it was the sound of a woman screaming. It took her another to realize it was her own voice.

  She leaped to her feet, staggered, stumbled, and fell to her knees. She blinked her eyes free of tears. Where was she? What was happening?

  She was surrounded by the gleaming yellow, brown, and gold of slabs and screens of amber of Garlot’s treasure chamber. It was larger than its seemed when seen through the amber doors. The huge crystal cauldron was midmost, but here also were chairs, a writing desk, a book cabinet, all partly or wholly hewn of polished amber. In addition to being a bank vault and an infirmary, this was Garlot’s library or sitting room. There were miniature girls along the shelves and in the chandelier, and also in a lantern on the desk and atop a candlestick. There were too many tiny, glowing, woebegone faces to take in at a glance. She did not see Elfine.

  The body of Althjof was inside the cauldron. She saw it through the glassy walls of the cauldron and wished she had not. Althjof was curled like a dead insect, fist raised as if ready to ward off a blow, and the body was slowly rotating as the agitated bubbles boiled over crooked limbs. Each inch of skin was pale, bloated, and blistered with severe burns.

  Ither the squire was kneeling at the foot of the cauldron, prodding the snakes that lived in the fire with a fire poker. His back was to Yumiko, but he turned at the sound of her screams.

  The bleeding body of Garlot was propped up in a chair at the foot of the amber step ladder leading to the cauldron mouth. His eyes were open, but he was unconscious. The gray cloak was draped over the chair back behind him and had clouds and splotches of red floating through it.