Prospero Regained (20 page)

“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do about your feet … D’oh!” Mephisto slapped his forehead again. “What a dope I am! I shouldn’t have called Caliban to me. I should have sent him home, back to where I’d first called him from. He could have picked up a few things for us before I called him back.”

“Can’t you send him back now?” Mab asked.

“I could,” Mephisto replied, “but now he’d appear back on the other side of the lava river, where I just called him from. But it does give me an idea!”

As Gregor removed his crimson robe, Mephisto tapped his staff. I began to imagine seven rough-looking young men in jeans, hooded sweatshirts, and a few spiked leather jackets, each with a great deal of gold jewelry hanging about his neck. Then, they were here. The seven young men looked around and clung to one another, wailing and wide-eyed with terror.

“Hi, there! It’s me. Remember me? The guy who pays for all your bling-bling?” Mephisto spread his arms, giving them a cheerful smile. Then, he pointed toward the biggest one, and another one who was about Theo’s size. “You! You! Strip! That’s right, take off all your clothes. Hurry, boys, you don’t want to stay in Hell a moment longer than you have to, do you?
Vite! Vite!
”

“Holy Croesus! His staff can actually call seven thugs from D.C.” Mab whistled. He scratched his stubble, grimacing. “He mentioned this when we first met him, during the drive to Vermont to visit Mr. Theophrastus, but all this time, I thought that was his idea of a joke.”

Quickly, two of the young men stripped down to their underwear, which Theo insisted they be allowed to keep. Their companions huddled together, the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled over their heads to protect them from the ash and cinders. As soon as their clothing was on the ground, Mephisto tapped his staff and sent the terrified hoodlums home.

“How did you acquire such unsavory servants?” Gregor asked disapprovingly.

“They mugged me,” Mephisto explained. “After I had my friends”—he patted the figurines on his staff fondly—“explain things to them, they agreed to come work for me.”

“Hardly nice to bring them to a place like this … even if they are muggers,” Erasmus said. He ducked his head as the sky rained cinders. “On the other hand, this place would make one heck of a Scared Straight program!”

“I’ll give ’em a bonus,” Mephisto said confidently. “Maybe a Lear jet or a Humvee.” As he handed the sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers to Theo and Caliban, I could not help wondering who Mephisto expected would pay for these new toys.

Mab wondered the same thing, only he did it out loud. “Hey, Harebrain, how do you pay for all this stuff you give them if you are always broke?”

“Why do you think I go broke so quickly?” Mephisto answered cheerfully. “I am a rich, stock-owning Prospero, after all. But by the time I get done feeding and taking care of all my friends, I seldom have anything left. I do have a lot of friends, you know.” He patted his staff. “That and taking pretty girls on expensive dates. That eats up the lucre, too.”

Caliban squeezed into the larger thug’s jeans and Nikes but not the leather jacket, which was too small. He managed to pull on one of the sweatshirts. Theo received a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a pair of black boots. He put on the leather jacket Caliban had discarded and ripped the hooded sweatshirt into strips which he used to strap on his breastplate. Then, he took charge.

Coolly, in his best Theophrastus the Demonslayer voice, my brother instructed: “Mephisto, find us a path out of here. Erasmus and Titus—Gregor, keep your staves ready. Gregor, unlimber the
Staff of Darkness
and get us some cover!” He glanced in puzzlement at Titus, who held up Gregor’s old staff. Theo shrugged and clicked his goggles, which were, amazingly, still working, and a low noise, like a dynamo beginning to spin, reverberated from his staff. “As for the rest of you, stay behind me!”

Spreading his legs and setting his feet on the bumpy ground, he shouldered the
Staff of Devastation
and took aim.

CHAPTER

TEN

Promises of Marriage

Fifteen minutes later, blazing sunlight, more brilliant than the eye could tolerate, flooded the lava tube where we had paused, hiding and waiting for Theo and Gregor to catch up. It was warm here, but only pleasantly so, not like the oppressive heat of the lava fields we had just fled. We stood around Mephisto who was attempting to use John Dee’s crystal globe to provide light.

“Show me the sun,” he had instructed the ball.

“Too bright! Too bright!” several of us shouted as a brilliant glow lit the room, hurting our eyes.

“Daylight, Harebrain, not the sun itself!” Mab had turned his back and covered his face with his arms. “You wanna blind us all?”

“Show me daylight.” Mephisto’s voice came cheerfully.

A moment later, a pleasant glow poured out of the glass sphere, illuminating the cruel points of the stalactites hanging overhead and the pumice floor, which crunched beneath our step.

Behind us, Theo and Gregor came running down the tube. When they reached the rest of us, they stopped, panting. Theo’s staff still hummed and vibrated in his hand.

“Got him,” Theo said. “At least, I think I did, but I had to shoot him twice.” He paused while Erasmus whistled in astonishment. “I’ve never had to shoot anything twice before. Must have been something big, in all senses of the word!”

“What about the flying flocks?” asked Caliban.

“Scattered after the first blast, those that didn’t immediately crisp,” Theo replied. He twisted his white metallic staff, and the whirring dynamo noise fell silent. He then separated it and slipped the two parts into the holster on his back.

Gregor said, “It’s a very good thing we found the lava tube before Theo fired at full-strength. When the glare cleared from the first shot, the entire landscape—islands, demons, sinners, and all—had been transformed into one giant glassy crater, which promptly sank with a loud pop, lava pouring over its lip. This sent a wave of molten magma over the place where we had all been standing.” He shook his head. “I am not a soft man, but even I feel sorry for the sinners caught in that blast. True, they will return eventually, but pain is still painful, even in Hell.”

“Good thing the ball showed us the tube,” Mab said. “Not sure I could have taken much more of that squiggly landscape that looked like weird petrified intestines.”

“Speaking of this tube,” asked Titus, “where does it come out, do we know?”

“In the country of Gluttons,” Mephisto confided, smiling down at the glowing ball, so that his face was suffused with light. “I peeked ahead.”

“Sounds unpleasant.” Gregor shook his head. “Especially since my stomach is so empty, the burning wine Maugris spoke about is beginning to sound appealing.”

Titus removed his pack. “I have some rations still. Oh, wait, they’ve been dipped in the bog. Is that going to harm them?”

“Let’s take a look,” insisted Erasmus, opening Titus’s pack.

Titus’s food turned out to have been mainly prewrapped or in sealed bags. The bread and chocolate were ruined, but there were various nuts, summer sausage, a bag of baby carrots, and some protein bars, which he kindly shared among the eight of us, along with three cans of soda pop. The smell of sausage and grape soda pop made my mouth water. I sat on the pumice and eagerly devoured my share. I could not recall having been this hungry since the late seventeenth century, the time I had spent three days trapped in a fallen house.

“Best not to go into the Hell of the Gluttons hungry, if we can help it,” observed Mab, munching on a handful of carrots.

I bit into a carrot. I could not recall the last time I had eaten something that tasted so good. One benefit of our recent traumas was that my thoughts were no longer obsessed with Astreus. I felt sane again; my mind was my own.

Even better, as we sat and ate, the self-cleaning enchantments woven into our garments had an opportunity to work their magic. Within a short time, Gregor, Titus, Erasmus, Mephisto, and I all wore clean clothes. Theo and Caliban were dressed in garments taken from Mephisto’s thugs. That meant only Mab still looked bedraggled, his trench coat and fedora caked with mud and stained with bog water.

Titus took a bite of one of the protein bars. “Riding on that bird got me thinking … all those swan maidens you brought home, Erasmus. How did you find them? You must know something about dealing with Fairyland. Any chance of seducing someone who could bring us more Water of Life from the elvish court?”

“No luck there,” Erasmus replied. “Not unless I could seduce one of the Queen’s Ladies, or the Queen herself. The kind of girl you can trap by sneaking up and stealing her cloak isn’t given access to Water of Life.”

“Not a good idea.” Mephisto slumped down until he was practically lying across the tube.

“The Elf Queen Maeve is actually the Queen of Air and Darkness in disguise,” Mab said glumly.

I managed to take a sip of soda and pass the can to Theo without spilling the precious liquid. Mephisto was not so lucky. He sat up, spitting his grape soda across the tunnel.

“How did you find out!” He looked about frantically. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know about this!” He stuck his fingers in his ears. “Not listening. Not listening. Not listening.”

“Is she really?” Erasmus cut himself a slice of sausage. “How amazing! The same woman we saw up in the sky in that flying chariot? The one who’s after Mephisto?”

Mab glanced at Mephisto nervously. “Harebrain’s right. It might be better if we didn’t talk about the Queen of Demons in his presence.”

Lilith, the Queen of Air and Darkness, seemed to rise like a specter before me. Was she my mother? Was I some half-demon monstrosity who had to be controlled by Father’s magic lest I turn and rend my family?

No. I did not believe it!

I would not believe it.

Unfortunately, this hypothesis fit the facts. It explained “M,” and Theo’s theory and Malagigi’s observations. And yet, deep down, I did not believe it. Deep down, I believed in Father. I believed he was not the sort of man who would cast a spell upon his beloved daughter, and I believed that no Demon Queen could fool him, at least not for very long.

But I could be wrong. I had been wrong about Ferdinand, about Ulysses, about so many things.

I deliberately returned to Titus’s subject. “What about Fiachra? I saw him at the New Year’s party. Could he help?”

Erasmus shook his head. “Not highly ranked enough.”

“We could try their quests. I, for one, still think that’s a splendid idea.” Theo patted his staff. “There must be some task on their Questing Board that we could accomplish.”

“What’s a Questing Board?” whispered Caliban to Mephisto, but the latter still had his fingers in his ears.

Mab whispered back, “It’s where the elven court posts tasks they want done. If you accomplish them successfully, they reward you with Water of Life.”

“Don’t know how they’d take our getting involved.” Erasmus took a bite of sausage. “What we need is the backing of a member of the High Council. I can’t really help there, but maybe we could sell them our sister. She’s damaged goods anyway.” He turned toward me. “How long do you have to wait until you find out if you’re pregnant with a half-demon bastard?”

With no preliminary warning, Theo hit him. He punched Erasmus in the face. I cheered, but this did not take away the feeling of having been slapped. Silently, I prayed to whatever power was listening that there would be no unpleasant consequences from Osae’s attack.

“Not the nose again!” Erasmus cried as blood gushed down his lips and chin. “What are you hitting me for? I’m not the one who’s responsible!”

“You do not talk about our sister that way.” Theo crossed his arms and glared down at Erasmus. “Ever.”

Erasmus started to reach for his staff, but the rest of the family was glaring at him as well. He slumped back against the wall of the lava tube, one hand pressed against his face.

“I would make a big deal about this,” Erasmus muttered, “except I’ve decided to give you a pass for having just lived through a dunking in the Lava of Wrath. Really, though, Theo, after seeing where anger can lead a person, it might behoove you to curb your temper.”

“Maybe Miranda could marry her elf!” Mephisto suggested, paying Erasmus and Theo no heed. He had taken his fingers from his ears and was shoveling nuts into his mouth. “She saw him at Christmas, you know. They danced together and then slipped off into the night … alone!”

“You have your own elf?” Gregor looked up from the protein bar he had begun to unwrap. He had stopped to read the ingredients and had been puzzling over some of the substances listed. Whatever Ulysses had fed him on Mars, apparently it had not come in brightly colored packages.

Mab frowned at me. “Never did get to ask you where you went that night at Santa’s.”

“Astreus took me on the back of that same star-swan Mephisto just called up. We flew to Hyperborea, where he gave me a copy of the
Book of the Sibyl,
” I said.

The Elf Lord’s name tasted sweet in my mouth, and my heart soared at the chance to speak it—so much for having put him from my mind!

“The
Book of the Sibyl
!” Theo cried. “After all this time!” Then, he winced as he recalled why I no longer needed it. “Quite decent of him. Any idea why he did this?”

“The Lord of the Winds had heard a prophecy that a Sibyl of Eurynome would free the elves from their oath to Hell.” My voice dropped. “He was hoping that Sibyl would be me.”

“Wow!” Mab whispered. “You didn’t tell me about this, Ma’am! Released from the tithe to Hell. Could a Sibyl do that?”

“Sibyls can absolve oaths,” I replied.

“Wouldn’t that be glorious?” Theo’s eyes glittered. “What a coup that would be for the Powers of Good!”

“Well, then. It’s settled.” Titus gave a big smile. “When we go back, our sister can marry this elf. No reason for her not to, anymore. Surely, a member of the High Council will have access to Water of Life.”

“Let’s just hope that he is not as stingy with giving it out to his relatives as Miranda is,” Erasmus quipped, but he was smiling with almost no trace of his customary smirk.