I did my best to sound like a disgruntled petty noble complaining about his unwanted trip to the depths, of course. Niloch’s questions were sympathetic at first, but after a while I began to think he was trying to trip me up, pulling out little inconsistencies and asking me with poison sweetness to explain them.
“You see,” he told me after I had finished one long, self-conscious answer, “there are things afoot, my sweet, oh, yes. Apparently an outsider,” he said the word with a hissing emphasis, “has got into Hell through one of the old, disused gates.”
“Outsider? Got in?” I was suddenly finding it hard to talk, despite the absence of small kicking things in my throat for the first time in an hour. “Who . . .?”
“Who would be so rude as to enter our fair lands without making themselves known—especially if they were sent by You-Know-Who?” He gave me a look. If those little red eyes could have twinkled, they would have, but instead they just sat there like drops of wet paint. “I couldn’t say—but I’m sure you can, my dear Snakestaff?” The eyes went opaque. “Can’t you? Hmmm?”
“But I told you, I didn’t see anything!”
“Oh, come, my squishy, breakable friend. The time for that is over. I am so very certain that you have more to share with me, that I’ve arranged an appointment for you with my court jester, Greenteeth. He’ll jolly it out of you. Come in, Master Greenteeth, I know you’re eager!” he called out. “We’re ready for you now.”
Something waddled in through one of the doorways. It was only about half my height but squat and muscular and slick as an amphibian. I couldn’t see any eyes on it, but it had plenty of mossy, sharp teeth. Far more than a reasonable mouthful. When it reached Niloch’s side he reached down to pet it with a clawed hand as though it were a beloved pet. Invisible bells jingled faintly when the creature moved. He might have been a jester, but I wasn’t laughing.
“You see,” the commissar warbled, “I promised to bring back some new toys from the Shrieking Meat Bazaar for little Greenteeth. Oh, and I did, my sweet lump, I did. He’ll be aching to try them out, and from the way you have behaved at dinner, I suspect you don’t like pain.” Niloch raised a hand as I began my desperate protests. “No, no, do not be foolish, darling one. I’m sure you’re in a hurry to prove me wrong, but we cannot start tonight when you’re weary from your travels. That would dull the piquancy of the thing, would it not? Tired flesh is insensitive flesh.” He raised a hand. Instantly, I was surrounded by burned apes. Their rough fingers closed on my arms and lifted me from my stone seat. “We will begin when the morning beacons are lit, or just a little before,” Niloch said. “I have not had a conversation orchestrated by my beloved Greenteeth for some time. It will be a joyful day.” The commissar patted the thing and it showed its teeth in an even wider grin, until I thought the whole top of its head might fall off and roll away. “Until the morning, then. Take him to his chamber.”
I was dragged deep into Gravejaw House, past weeping animals and scarred servants with empty expressions, then shackled to the walls of a bare, dank stone room. The slaves’ torches reflected from floor and walls slick with various liquids, only a few of which were obviously blood. Just before my captors left me, I heard something screech in a nearby room, a shrill, ragged sound that wasn’t anywhere near human. I was pretty sure it was another guest being softened up for a session with the commissar and his pal Greenteeth.
The door closed. I heard the heavy bolt being thrown. I thrashed in my chains but could barely move them, let alone break them. With the torches gone, darkness filled the room, a blackness close to absolute.
eighteen:
a darkness like death
I STRUGGLED, OF course. Shit, yes, I struggled. I heaved at the chains until every nerve and muscle in my body felt like it was going to burst through my skin, but the links were too heavy and thick even for demon-strength. I tried to pull my hands out through the shackles themselves, but although I tugged until my gray flesh tore against the metal cuffs, in the end I just couldn’t slip them free. If I could have bitten off my own thumbs to make it work I would have—I was that desperate, because I knew that Niloch and his torturer would have me screaming my real name and mission within an hour after starting on me, and then the pain would really begin. But my chains held my hands out at either side of my body, far from my mouth. My legs were free, but my bottom half wasn’t going anywhere without the rest of me.
I was slumped in defeat, exhausted and probably bleeding badly when I heard, or perhaps felt, a whisper of sound in the dark cell.
“. . . And may his every work come undone, and the stink of his shame follow him wherever he goes.”
“Who’s there?” I’ll leave out the pathetic quaver in my voice. “Who said that?”
After a moment of charged silence I heard it again, a little louder this time. “You . . . you can hear me?” The voice was female, or seemed to be, but of course you can’t trust anything in Hell.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are you?” Was it another prisoner in a connecting cell? Or just another torment, although more subtle than most of what Niloch had shown so far?
“Who am I? Now there’s a question.” I could almost smell her sour amusement. “When I was, I was Heartspider, the commissar’s favorite.” Again the impression of a laugh, bitter and not altogether sane. “But there have been several favorites since me. If you look around, you’ll see what’s left of them.”
“I can’t see. It’s too dark.”
“Not much left of them anyway. Piles of bones in the corner. Picked clean, for the most part. Niloch’s sticky little torturer gets what’s left, but he’s a messy housekeeper.”
I didn’t want to think about the bones. “But you? Where are you?”
“One of the piles.”
It took me a moment, but then I understood. “You’re . . . you’re dead.”
“Nobody dies here, you poor fool. If they ever cleaned up I could at least go on to do my suffering elsewhere, but instead I’ve been trapped in this place for longer than I can remember.”
A ghost. She was a ghost, or at least the closest thing to it I’d encountered in Hell, her body ruined, all but destroyed, but her soul or spirit still haunting the place where she’d been butchered. And the Sollyhull Sisters thought they had it bad because they were stuck with coffee shops!
“Can you help me?” I asked her. “If you do, I’ll help you.”
“There’s nothing I can do for you.” A long pause this time. “How? How could you help me?”
“You tell me. If I was free, I could carry your bones away from here. Would that help?”
“It might.” For a brief moment I thought I could hear something new in the disembodied voice, but when she spoke it was flat and hopeless again. “But it doesn’t matter. I can’t bring you the key. I can’t command a slave to release you. By my sweet Satan, do you think I’d still be here if I had any power to do anything?” A gust of fury blew through the room, a hatred so intense I could feel it. “I would have made Niloch my own prisoner long ago if I could. I would burn him every day with fire ’til his little red eyes sizzled and popped. I would bind him until his own horns curled back through his flesh. I would tear him and salt him. I would suck his balls out of his vent and chew them like grapes . . .”
My chains rattled as I slumped back against the wall. I shared her hatred; one thing about being trapped in Hell, I was definitely finding it easier to hate. But it did neither of us any good.
Heartspider wore down at last, trailing into whispers. For a long time neither of us spoke. My mind was racing, but like a rat in a maze, each turn led to another dead end.
“The floor,” she said suddenly.
I stirred. “What?”
“The floor. I watched you nearly manage to pull your hands out of the shackles. The floor is slippery with blood and fat. Far more than just my own. A dozen or more after me have been dispatched here and the slaves have not washed it down.”