Prospero Regained (39 page)

“Interesting.” Mab made a note. “And the Perp … er … I mean Mr. Ulysses?”

“I nick stuff,” Ulysses offered. Of all of us, he seemed the least disturbed by the cold and miserable conditions. He was shivering, but he seemed as cheerful as ever.

“You steal for Mr. Prospero?”

Ulysses shrugged. “You know how keen the Orbies are on keeping magic talismans out of circulation? Well, someone’s got to be the one to pinch them from the current owners and put them in the Vault. That someone happens to be me.”

Seeing us all staring at him, Ulysses gestured at his
Staff of Transportation.
“You don’t think the Guv’nor gave me this old thing so I could impress ladies with the Hope Diamond at parties and imprison my favorite brother on Mars, do you?”

“How could Father condone such a thing?” Gregor demanded. “Stealing is a sin! It is breaking a Commandment!”

“Father seems to condone a great deal of things that don’t sit well with the Commandments,” murmured Theo.

Mab said, “Rewriting history, for instance. Isn’t that Bearing False Witness?”

“I leave money!” Ulysses objected hotly. “Of course, I get to decide what the thing is worth, but I’ve taken quite a few appraisal courses, and I fancy myself a fair hand at estimating the value of things.

“As for the Commandments, I’ve never really put much stock in that sort of truck.” Ulysses paused to glance around nervously at the striated rocks of solid misery. “Of course, I’ll give it a great deal more thought, now! Definitely don’t want to have to come back here! Still, I think I nab things for a good cause. ‘Salvation of Mankind’ and all that.”

“How can you call yourself a Prospero and not honor the Commandments?” Gregor shook his head in disgust. Theo also looked appalled, but Erasmus chuckled. Theo frowned severely at Erasmus, and the two glared at each other until a turn of the path put a rock wall between them.

It was one thing for Erasmus and me to bicker; it was quite a different thing for Theo to be angry with him. While Theo was often grumpy, he was seldom on bad terms with anyone, except Mephisto—the two of them were forever sniping at each other, but it was a brotherly sniping, usually born of Theo’s concern for Mephisto. This new tension between him and Erasmus, since we left Dis, was beginning to disturb me.

Meanwhile, Ulysses was saying, “Oh, I was devout enough when I was a lad, back when I lived with Guv’nor. But, then, all this traveling around … I’m good with places, but not with times—this was before these modern alarm watches—I started missing the occasional church service. Then, every other one and then, I plum forgot to go.

“Then, one day,” Ulysses continued, “I read this article that explained how little independent evidence exists for the Bible, the New Testament anyway. Apparently, we don’t have any contemporary sources, other than the Bible, for the existence of this Jesus chap. He’s mentioned in some ancient books, Josephus and the like, but scholars discovered those references were forgeries added several hundred years later. So, I began thinking maybe this Savior chap never existed at all. Why should I have to go sit on a hard bench and hear some old bloke drone on about him?”

“That is our fault,” Cornelius sighed. Then, he gasped as the rainbow-colored weasel whacked him in the face.

“No sighing or pouting!” Mephisto declared, wrapping the little creature about his shoulders again and feeding it a bit of honey from his pocket, which he had apparently filled with the sticky stuff. The creature nuzzled Mephisto’s ear with its big red nose and licked him fondly with a thin black tongue. Meanwhile, Cornelius chuckled in spite of himself.

“The crime you’re talking about, Corney, took place nearly two thousand years ago,” Ulysses objected. “I’m still shy of my two hundredth year. You can’t pin that one on me!”

“Me neither!” Mephisto shouted gleefully. He put honey on his nose and giggled raucously as the cheer weasel licked it off.

“By ‘our,’ I meant the
Orbis Suleimani,
which would include you, too, if you ever showed up for meetings.” Cornelius addressed Ulysses. He tried to speak sternly but, due to the weasel’s lingering influence, a smile kept creeping onto his face.

“Sorry, old boy, the schedule thing…” Ulysses waved a hand. “What do the Orbies have to do with all this Jesus stuff?”

“In the early days of the Christian movement, the
Orbis Suleimani
removed references to Christ and His miracles from historical documents, the same way they have removed references to other gods and magic,” Cornelius began.

“The
Orbis Suleimani
weren’t Christians back then?” Ulysses interrupted, surprised.

Cornelius halted in disbelief, his cane still dangling before him. “The organization was started by King Solomon of Israel!”

“Oh. Quite.”

“As I was saying,” Cornelius regained his dignity. “In the third century, a leader of the
Orbis Suleimani
known as Claudius Nocturnus was healed of a club foot. Claudius converted to Christianity and took the rest of the
Orbis Suleimani
with him. Once they became Christians, they regretted the work their predecessors had done covering Christ’s trail—including editing Josephus—so they sought to undo the damage by putting back what had been removed. Only they had not kept proper records of the original wording, so they wrote their own version.”

“So it was a forgery, but only because they were trying to replace the original reference, which they had removed?” Ulysses shook his head. “Far too confusing for the likes of me!”

*   *   *

THE
easy but very long switchbacks ended, and we began traipsing straight downhill in single file. Across the valley into which we descended was the entrance to the pass for which we headed. It seemed such a shame that we had to descend all that way just to rise up again, but even with the influence of the cheer weasel, Mephisto could not get any of his winged friends to fly here. The moment he summoned them up, they began shrieking or shivering or curled up into a ball. The only animal he summoned up that seemed unaffected by the Mountains of Misery was the weasel.

Disappointed, we started down into the valley. Once we were underway again, Mab returned to his subject again. “So, Mr. Ulysses, you collect magical talismans?”

Ulysses nodded. “Exactly, taking them out of the hands of men and demons alike!”

“That is where the new items in the Vault came from!” I exclaimed suddenly, thunderstruck as his words finally registered with me.

“Right-o!”

“Wow. That’s … amazing,” I choked out.

A great many explanations for how new talismans, such as Gungnir, were making their way into the Vault had occurred to me. None of them had included the possibility that my wayward youngest brother was out there doing his part for the family.

Titus rumbled. “Ulysses finds them, and I guard them, making sure that no one, including Ulysses, can steal them. I also go to the location of a magical disturbance and stop it with the antimagical aspects of my staff … Gregor’s staff, now … but only if it’s such a massive disturbance that it will still be going on once I get there, which is seldom the case, nowadays. Unless Ulysses happens to be nearby and can give me a ride.”

“This job you were doing, keeping the magic guarded”—Mab fixed his eye on Titus—“it wouldn’t happen to involve a dollhouse?”

Titus looked rapidly around at the silent skyscrapers, as if to make certain no one was listening. “Shhh! Do not speak of that here! It’s your duty, now, Gregor. I’ll tell you all about it, if we get out of here alive.”

“Very well.” Gregor nodded grimly.

“The Vault!” Titus struck his forehead with his palm. “Damn you, Logistilla! What a fool of a woman!”

“Please do not wish my sister any closer to Hell than she already is,” Gregor growled, moving closer to Logistilla, who raised her nose in the air, giving Titus the cut direct.

Titus turned, towering over Gregor. “Did anyone explain to you that when
your sister
turned me into a bear, she left me that way for
two years
? During those two years, the work I was doing for Father went undone. I had been using my staff to guard the Vault and keep the demons from it. Who knows what might have gotten in there while I was gone.”

“Seir of the Shadows, for one,” I murmured.

“If Father had only told the rest of us about this,” Theo frowned, “Logistilla might have known enough to see to the problem.”

“Or she might have told Ulysses, and the demon they worked for,” Erasmus countered smugly. “And they might have tried to kill Titus, too.”

“Oh!” Theo looked embarrassed. “Good point.”

As we climbed a steep incline, I thought about my recent trip to the Vault. At the time, I had wondered why the fourth pedestal in the Elemental Chamber was empty. Now, I knew where Ophion, the Serpent of the Wind, was. Rather than solving matters, however, this discovery had opened the question of what had happen to the demon whom everyone thought had been in the instrument.

If Father felt that each of Solomon’s demons needed a keeper, so much so that when he decided to give up the
Staff of Transportation,
he went to the trouble of siring a son, Ulysses, solely for the purpose of giving the staff to him, then he cannot have left Vinae just lying around somewhere. He would have bound him into some object and given it to a family member for safekeeping.

Oh. Of course.

“It was King Vinae!” I declared.

Two things happened simultaneously. First, Erasmus spun around and stared at me, a gleam of great interest in his eye. Second, Caliban bent his head, so that his cheek and nose rubbed against his club, and made a low
shushing
noise.

“Yes?” Erasmus left the path and moved closer, over dangerously loose rocks. The gleam in his eye unnerved me. “What about him?”

“I was just trying to remember his name,” I equivocated.

“Ah, Vinae.” Erasmus stepped back onto the path. He pushed his dark hair from his eyes and smiled dreamily. “What I could have learned, what I could have achieved, if Father had allowed me even a few minutes with him! But Father feared Vinae. He’d had some kind of bad experience with the demon in his youth, and didn’t trust either himself or me to be anywhere near him. Which is why I thought Father had relegated Vinae to his lesser function of calling up storms, trapping him in the
Staff of Winds
.

“Only, if Baelor’s correct—and under the circumstance, there’s no reason not to believe him—Vinae’s not in your flute.” Erasmus gave a light self-mocking smile. “And to think that all these years I envied you and coveted that instrument. What a waste of my energy! Still,” he concluded, “King Vinae would have made an excellent
Staff of Wisdom.
”

“There should be a lesson for you in there,” Gregor said.

“I wonder where Father put him,” rumbled Titus.

“Let us hope we find Father and can ask him,” Gregor replied gravely. “The thought that there might be a demon lying about someplace unguarded strikes terror into my heart.”

“Perhaps it’s in the Vault,” suggested Theo.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Caliban continue to pat his club and whisper to it surreptitiously.

So, I was right. It had been Vinae’s voice that Theo heard instructing Caliban on how to escape from the lava. No wonder Caliban had struggled to save the club!

It made sense. Only someone with little curiosity and no interest in intellectual pursuits could be trusted in the presence of King Vinae. Oddly, it seemed as if the effect of carrying the
Staff of Wisdom
—the very same influence that might have led Erasmus, or even Father, to ruin—had inspired the dull-witted Caliban, until he grew to think and consider like any ordinary man. If so, in one elegant move, Father had civilized Caliban and hidden Vinae from Erasmus, trusting the whole matter, instead, to Mephisto.

Clearly, Father had not wanted Erasmus to know where King Vinae was, so I did not reveal the secret. Yet, I resolved to find a chance to get Caliban alone and question the club. Perhaps, I could get it to tell me what secret Seir possessed that made him believe he could stand up to Lilith.

Mab had been scribbling in his notebook as he walked. Now, he looked up. “Let’s see, where were we? Anything else you do, Mr. Titus?” Mab asked. Titus shook his head. “Nope? Next…”

Mephisto raised his hand. “Ooo, ooh, pick me! Pick me! I catch stuff. You could call me the family recruiter. I tame monsters and get them to join our side. If I can tame ’em, they live. If not, it’s off to Theophrastus the Demonslayer!”

As he walked, Theo was staring grimly at the gray rocks beneath his feet. “I grow apples.”

Whack!
Mephisto whipped the weasel off his shoulder, smacked it across Theo’s face, and flipped it back again with a single motion of his wrist. The weasel issued its happy, toylike squeak.

“Ah! Mephisto, for Heaven’s sake!” Theo laughed, rubbing his nose as if it still tingled. “What a startling sensation!”

Turning to Mab, he chuckled. “Before I became a farmer, I slew demons, monsters that Mephisto could not tame, and really nasty sorcerers. I also used to help intimidate spirits into submitting to Prospero, Inc.’s contracts. A lot of things were afraid of me for some reason.”

“I wonder why…” Mab muttered beneath his breath.

Gregor held up a hand in front of his face, as if to block any incoming weasels. “Before my imprisonment, I fought witches, ghouls, zombies, vampires, and other foul creatures who could be driven back by holy means. I was also the official Prospero, Inc., oath binder. I officiated over the oaths sworn by our clients—a job that belongs to Titus now.”

“Mr. Cornelius?” asked Mab.

Cornelius took a moment to answer. In the silence, his cane tapped regularly from side to side, feeling for the trail. “I run the
Orbis Suleimani,
which is charged with the task of upholding King Solomon’s legacy and protecting mankind from magic. I also arrange for policy in various countries to favor us, when necessary.” He jiggled his cane. “Recently, however, I have been spending more and more of my time growing identities for Father’s ‘great project.’”