Prospero in Hell (51 page)

“The
Orbis Suleimani!
” I cried. “Of course!”

I had not considered their role in all this. As we grew old and feeble, we could place our staffs back into the hands of the organization Solomon set up as jailers for these very demons. With an angel guiding them, perhaps they could hold out against the mechanizations of Baelor and his ilk. After all, they had held out for centuries before Father came along.

This was not just any angel, I realized abruptly. This was the guardian angel of mankind; the angel who was charged with the task of protecting the human race from the ravages of the supernatural; the angel for which the
Orbis Suleimani
—and therefore my family—worked! A feeling of awe and wonder flowed through me so all-consuming that for a time, I could not speak.

“Is there no hope for my family?” I asked finally. “Will we perish as the Angel of the Bottomless Pit predicted?”

“Hope is eternal, as certain of your poets have said.”

“How? What can we do?”

“Each member of your family carries a secret flaw, a private sin. You must overcome these vices and act together, if you wish to complete your task.”

“You mean the sin that carrying a demon-infested staff has engendered?” I asked.

The glorious woman placed her palm upon my head. I saw a vision of my family: Erasmus sitting with his head lowered in despair; Theo raising his fist, his face red with wrath; Mephisto lying in a bed with three barmaids; Cornelius placing pins sporting the symbol of the
Orbis Suleimani
on a map of the world, his calmness belying his ambition; Titus lazing on a couch, too slothful to rise; old stocky Gregor, his eyes dark with hatred; Logistilla gnawing on her fingers as she stared enviously; Ulysses greedily slipping someone else’s jewels into his vest pocket.

Muriel Sophia spoke in her heavenly voice. “
Only Gregor comes close to mastering of his passions and conquering his sin, and only of late, since his seeming death.”

I nodded, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Erasmus, despair? Malice I would have understood, or pride, but when had cool casual Erasmus become a victim of despair? Was this a recent thing, since Osae’s attack? I thought of asking, but decided the angel might not take kindly to being doubted.

I had seen nothing of myself. For a moment, I congratulated myself on being the one perfect child among my father’s flawed offspring. Yet, I knew better.

“And what of my sin, Angel?”

“Pride, my child, the sin of Lucifer.”
The angel lifted my chin with her shining hand.
“You carry in your heart the Pride of Angels. It is your great glory and your great sorrow.”

It was not to my credit that her words pleased me. “Pride of Angels”—it sounded glorious. And yet, at the same time, I knew despair, for I recognized her pronouncement as true. My pride was like a great crown, stiff and unwieldy, keeping me from bending even when bending would serve me.

“What should I do?”

“Prospero is yet needed on the Earth. He must not be allowed to perish before his time. Recalling him with the
Staff of Eternity
will fail. Waste no time upon it. Go to him and bring him bodily from Hell. Between you and your siblings, you have all that is needed to succeed.”

I had expected more platitudes. This practical advice startled and cheered me. Could Father be saved? For the first time since Osae’s attack, hope rekindled in my heart.

“Is there anything we should know?”

“Only that no man is asked to give more than he is able,”
the beautiful Virtue replied.
“Yet oft’ men underestimate what it is within them to give. Give what is required, and your reward shall be greater than you can now imagine.”

Her words struck me as ominous, and yet, here in her presence, I could not recall exactly what fear felt like. I recalled that I often had a nervous feeling in my stomach and a tension in my shoulders, and that sometimes my heart beat rapidly… but I could not recall the exact sensation, or why it troubled me so much.

Once, I walked across a battlefield strewn with dead French soldiers in their handsome blue and white uniforms. I recalled stepping respectfully over their bodies, a handkerchief perfumed with lavender pressed against my nose to keep out the stink of rotting corpses. Everywhere was war and desolation, burnt cottages, ruined crops, the horrible, buglelike bellow of wounded horses.

Rounding around a broken supply cart, I came upon a stone church. The door hung open. I called out to the priest and entered. I do not remember what I was looking for—directions, perhaps, or clean water. I do not remember if I found it, or even if there was a priest present after all. What I do remember was the cloister.

After passing down the aisle through the dark pews, I stepped out the back door and into the walled garden that stood between the sanctuary and the rectory. A mosaic pebble path ran between two ponds upon which lotuses floated. Lily-of-the-valley grew around the ponds. A little wagtail wet its wings in a bird bath. The moss-covered walls rose to either side of me, blocking out all but the canapé of a tall birch.

I let my handkerchief fall to the pebbly path and breathed in the fresh earthy scent. Above, the sky was a pure and cloudless blue. I could hear no sound from outside the thick walls—no soldiers moaning; no weeping of wives, too recently widowed to have yet donned their black weeds; no beasts in pain—only the splashy flutter of a single blue-headed wagtail.

Standing there, amidst that island of serenity, I found I could no longer remember the war outside the wall. The beauty and tranquility here were so incongruous with the horror outside, that they could not both exist in the same universe. I could recall it, as if from a dream, but I could not really believe in it.

Once I stepped outside again and inhaled the smoke of burning flesh, it all came rushing back. So much so that the cloister was now the dream. And yet, it was a dream that would not fade, a dream that reminded me that even in the midst of devastation, peace still bloomed.

Speaking to the angel was like stepping again into that cloister and breathing once more the fragrant air within the shelter of its tall mossy walls.

“I will,” I vowed. “Whatever is required, I will accomplish.”

“One last thing, Child. Obedience is a virtue, and yet so is discernment. Angels have no free will for they partake of the Divine Word directly, but the children of men must learn to listen to the whisper of Divine Will within their hearts, that which men call wisdom. You were not meant to lean on your Father, or even Eurynome, forever.”

The fifth halo grew brighter, its golden glow warming me like sunlight. The more I basked in it—letting it spill into and illuminate the dark spaces in my mind—the more real it became to me, until the gold light seemed substantial, and the world around me faded like a dream. The stone of the balcony, the orchid-covered wall, and my room beyond all grew misty and indistinct, insubstantial. Glancing down, I experienced an instant of panicked vertigo, for the rock beneath my feet was fading, and I could see the sheer drop of the ravine beneath me. The instant passed, however, for I could not truly fear while I abided in the secret place of the angel’s radiance.

“I have stayed too long and must depart,”
the angel said.
“Your material world is too fragile to long sustain one of my high estate. It will fade like a dream should I stay longer. I must away before it vanishes altogether, as I wish no harm to those dwelling here within.”

The golden light of the fifth halo grew so bright I could hardly see anything else, and yet no matter how bright it became, it did not hurt my eyes. As the lovely form of the Virtue faded into pure gold, I heard her beautiful voice ring out one last time.

“Fear not, Child, for I am with thee always.”

Even after the heavenly glow was gone, I remained where I was, silently basking in the peace that remained in the wake of the angel’s visit. My heart felt so calm and filled with hope. The sorrow that had gripped me only minutes before seemed something of a forgotten age.

I knew it would return, that the peace brought by the angel would fade, and the agony would come again—the terrible loss of my Lady’s presence, the sorrow over Astreus’s fate, and the pain caused by our less-than-amicable
parting. At the moment, however, all was peaceful, and the causes of my distress seemed as far away as the moon.

Returning inside, I glanced at the chessboard beside the hearth to see that the black knight now threatened the white king. Peering closer revealed the check to be mate. My chuckle died in my throat, however, as, upon glancing up, I discovered the gift that had been granted my family.

Next to my fireplace, against the wall, rested a length of black wood marked with blood red runes. Whether by accident or design, Seir of the Shadows had left me Gregor’s staff.

“This has got to be the most cockamamie thing I’ve ever let you talk me into, Ma’am,” grumbled Mab.

“You didn’t have to come,” I reminded him.

“What, and let you all stomp off to face demons without a cautious voice among you?” Mab scoffed. “Might as well kill you myself, Ma’am. Besides, someone has to keep an eye on that accursed flute and make sure it doesn’t fall into the hands of the enemy after you Prosperos all perish horribly.”

We were, all of us, crawling on our hands and knees down a lightless, dusty passage. The tunnel began in the crate Mab, Mephisto, and I had found in the Maryland warehouse—the crate containing the gate through which Father had originally fallen into Hell. Mephisto and Mab had fetched it using Ulysses’s staff, and Theo had warded it in such a way as to keep ghouls and barghests from pouring out of it onto Father’s Island.

We had started out with flashlights and headlamps, but they failed after only a hundred feet or so. Gregor managed to suck up the palpable darkness into his staff, but we were still stuck crawling through darkness of the regular sort.

But none of this mattered to me. Finally, we were underway, all together. Nothing could stop us now.

“Please, Miranda,” came Ulysses’s voice from somewhere behind me. “It’s bad enough we are willfully crawling into Hell on your say-so. Can’t you keep your man from talking about our imminent demise?”

“Mab, please don’t frighten the masses,” I requested.

“As you wish, Ma’am,” came his grunted reply.

Erasmus’s voice floated back from the blackness ahead of us. “Tell me, again, why I am crawling through this dismal tunnel? Because some demon
put on a pretty face, called itself an angel, and told Big Sister Miranda the quickest way to damn us all? Aren’t we supposed to be keeping our staffs out of Hell? If so, this hardly seems the wisest course.”

“It was a true vision,” Cornelius’s voice replied. “I do not trust our elder sister, but I trust what I hear. When she spoke of her vision, Miranda’s voice held joy. Demons come in many guises and bring many passions—among them glee, excitement, and false hope—but they never bring joy. What Miranda saw was an angel.”

“But our angel? It makes no sense! Miranda was never initiated into the
Orbis Suleimani
. Why would our angel come to Miranda? Why would she not appear to those of us who serve her?” asked Erasmus.

“God moves in mysterious ways,” replied Gregor’s husky near-whisper, “and fills what vessels are available to him. Perhaps Miranda made herself available when the rest of us did not.”

“Oooph! Oh, this is ghastly,” Logistilla complained as she bumped into Titus. “Ulysses’s staff has been to Hell before. Why can’t we just teleport there?”

“Because I can only go the one place my staff has been,” Ulysses replied. “Believe me, you would not want to go
there!
”

“I don’t want to go at all!” whined Logistilla. “What evidence do we have that any other place in Hell will be any better?”

“Light!” cried Mephisto, from up front. From the start, he had abandoned his hands and knees in favor of the hip-stomach-and-elbow wriggle of a soldier’s crawl. “I see light! I think we’re coming to the end. Yippee!”

“Only Mephisto would cheer our successfully crawling into the Inferno.” Logistilla’s voice floated up from behind me. “Oh, do hurry! I have a most horrible cramp in my leg!”