Prospero Regained (48 page)

Around me, my siblings, too, struggled with strange impulses. Logistilla beat Ulysses about the head with her staff after she caught him during a brief break trying to gnaw on her leg. A fistfight broke out between, of all people, Theo and Gregor. The two of them rolled about in the snow and pummeled each other for about a minute before Caliban and Titus were able to tear them apart. Then, Mephisto curled up in a ball and crooned mournfully. It took us nearly twenty minutes to uncurl him.

Caliban carried him for part of the time, but even he had trouble moving along the ice holding a full-grown man as if he were a bag of groceries. We even argued about trying to use Mephisto’s staff to summon up the cheer weasel. Then, as quick as it had begun, Mephisto snapped out of whatever had been troubling him and continued forward as cheerfully as before. It occurred to me that Father Christmas may have given Mephisto that silly creature for a good reason.

*   *   *

WE
made our way down an icefall, jumping carefully from curving stair to stair, then across a field of glacial suncups, carefully stepping over the bumps and trying to avoid the deeper craters, some of which were filled with slick black ice.

Ahead, one of the thorny cages had a ring of angry wraiths such as we had seen around the cages of ice. Within, a proud man with a hawklike nose was dressed in the rich but tattered garments of a high official of the Church. He glared out while nimbly dodging spears of ice thrust at him by the more solid of his tormentors. I dared not glance at the cage for too long, but in my quick glimpse I saw no sign of wings or horns. Apparently, he had once been human.

“Theo, quick, give me your glasses!” Gregor tore the goggles off Theo’s face. Putting them on, he peered toward the cage and then gasped. “It’s him! The fiend!”

“Him, who?” Logistilla asked.

“Borgia!” Gregor bellowed, his face contorting with wrath. Breaking away from us, he leapt over the bumpy terrain and charged the cage. Seizing an icy javelin from one of the tormenting wraiths, my brother began to jab at the man within the cage, whom I now recognized from my brief, fleeting glances as Pope Alexander VI, the father of Cesare Borgia, whom Mephisto had once bested in a duel.

The prisoner’s nimble movements allowed him to escape the sharp tines of his ethereal oppressors, but Gregor was not so easily dodged. Once and then again, his blows struck home, stabbing the former pope’s shoulder and thigh.

The rest of us chased after him, though we crossed the uneven terrain more cautiously.

“So, this is the same guy Mr. Gregor was complaining about back in the swamp? How weird that we’d just stumble upon him!” Mab whistled.

“Not at all,” Cornelius replied from Caliban’s shoulders. The latter had scooped him up when the terrain had become too uneven. “Mephisto told us that this is where the fallen
Orbis Suleimani
are held. Roderic Borgia was a member of our great cause.”

“Yeah … I remember the Professor saying something about that,” Mab grunted.

Gregor screamed in rage, his face dark and blotchy with hate. He shouted accusations about how the horrors of the Reformation and the iniquity of today were all the fault of Pope Alexander’s decadent ways. As when he had faced Titus in Infernal Milan, he seemed larger and more brutal, more like the Gregor I had disliked of old, and less like the wiser brother who had returned from Mars. He thrust his bloody javelin into the cage with great accuracy, stabbing Pope Alexander VI again and again. Intellectually, I realized that the man was already dead, but it was still disconcerting to see my brother attack him thus.

“Perhaps, I should…” Logistilla began moving forward.

Titus blocked her way, his Scottish brogue unusually strong. “No good, Woman. In that state, he won’t even know ye.”

“Psst, Mephisto,” I hissed. “What about the cheer weasel?”

Mephisto shook his head. “No good against a really rip-roaring anger. Just helps with depression. Gregor’s gone bye-bye. He’s flipped out like a ninja.”

We had to keep going. We had no time to waste. We did not dare delay, so close to Father, but nor could we continue without Gregor.

One by one, each of my siblings went forward and tried to reason with Gregor. For the most part, he ignored them in his rage. They shook him, shouted at him or, in Mephisto’s case, tried telling jokes. It was not clear if he even heard them. Once or twice, one or another of them got in his way and he pushed them aside without even looking at them. Logistilla got the worst of it, she went flying backward and slid across the uneven ice on her backside. She sat there, weeping bitterly, until Titus went and picked her up, giving her a big bear hug, which she returned grudgingly.

Finally, everyone had tried except Caliban, Mab, and me. I stood thinking carefully: what did I know about Gregor that might help? There must be something that would snap him out of whatever had overcome him. Ah!

I walked up to where Gregor stood, stabbing and shouting. In a gentle but clear voice, I quoted back to Gregor the words he had said to me the morning after Osae’s attack. “‘You think your present sorrow is solid, like a sphere of diamond encasing your soul. But, the nature of sorrow is closer to that of ice. Ice melts when warmth is applied.’”

Gregor turned his head toward me. His eyes were red with hatred.

I met his gaze. “You said that to me. When I was drowning in sorrow after Osae’s attack, you said that to save me.”

Comprehension returned to Gregor’s face. He turned his head slowly, regarding his surroundings. When he saw the javelin in his hand, he threw it from him.

“No!” Gregor cried, looking at his hands, which were raw from the cold and ice. “But, I had forgiven my enemies! I had overcome my hatred!”

Erasmus leaned over so that he stood nose to nose with Gregor. “If you start bemoaning and carrying on, I’m going to join in, and I have so much more to bemoan than you do!”

“We can’t have that,” Gregor answered hoarsely. He managed a weak attempt at a smile.

“Let’s keep going, folks,” called Mephisto. “It’s not long now. Almost there! Just a little bit longer, and it will all be over. We can all go home, soak our feet, and have a long round with the cheer weasel.”

*   *   *

OUR
periods of silence grew longer, though this made things much more difficult for Cornelius. After Caliban fell and injured his knee, Cornelius was forced to walk again. Without the sound cues he was used to, he became disoriented. He slipped once and slid nearly three yards, scraping his cheek and chin. Finally, Gregor objected. He feared relying on the
Staff of Silence
was not wholesome. For one thing, it tended to make us sleepy. He urged us, instead, to pray, claiming this kept his mind clear.

A few minutes later, Logistilla complained, “Praying is no good. My thoughts keep drifting back to the many joys of sublimation.”

“Sublimation, as in going directly from a solid to a gaseous state?” Erasmus eyed her quizzically.

Logistilla’s eyes flashed. “Oh go ahead and mock me, you arrogant lout! I bet your impulses are so much nobler.”

Erasmus wisely fell silent.

Gregor eyed me speculatively. “Miranda, can you play a hymn on your flute? An ordinary hymn which will not affect the weather?”

“If she can’t, I can make it so she can!” Erasmus sprang forward and put his hand on Cornelius’s arm. When Cornelius raised his staff, Erasmus unwrapped a short length of the black warding cloth surrounding the
Staff of Persuasion
and cut it with a pocketknife. Then, he tied the piece around the haft of my flute like a black bow. “This will do it!”

Gregor bowed his head. “Then, in the name of all that’s holy, play!”

Raising my instrument to my lips, I chose a selection of hymns I had learned during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. I had played them many times in my life, but always upon mundane flutes, never upon the
Staff of Winds.
I played them cautiously, so as not to accidentally call up a storm.

The sacred music swelled and flowed over the landscape, sweeping before it all wrathful and inhuman thoughts. My fear vanished, replaced by a calm sense of buoyant well-being. So beautiful was the sound that, for an instant, I felt as if I had been transported back to the black swan and lay listening to the Music of the Spheres, or as if I stood before a choir of a thousand angels as they sang a new world out of the Sea of Chaos.

Around me, peace and hope replaced the tense wariness that had been gripping my family. Logistilla gazed about serenely, Cornelius’s slumped shoulders straightened, and Gregor went so far as to smile grimly. He and Theo shook hands, both claiming they could not recall why they had become angry. Theo hugged Titus, announcing that he forgave him for the incident on the ridge during the fight with Erasmus. Bursting into song, Mab took off his hat and held it over his heart.

Around us, the prisoners also responded. A minotaur’s bellowing fell silent, as did the screams of three dog-faced women. Several large monstrosities hunkered down, cocking their heads to listen. Even the nephilim seemed moved, a touch of something like unto sorrow touching their coldly perfect faces.

There were few humans in this area besides us, but those that were there ceased their contortions. They stood upright in their cages, as men were meant to stand, listening with calm expressions. One bedraggled yet stalwart man, who had been standing upright already, seemed particularly moved. Despite that the warped bars of his thorny cage had collapsed, constricting about him and inhibiting him from moving, he lifted his voice and joined in, singing the words.

I recognized his voice. I knew it as well as my own.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Master of a Full Poor Cell

“Father!”

We broke into a run, all shouting at once. As we neared Father’s cage, those in the front began to slide. Logistilla and Cornelius skittered helplessly across the slick snow. Ulysses tumbled onto his bottom, gliding over the glacier toward an incline to the right of the cage. Mephisto called up Kaa and threw Ulysses the comatose snake’s tail. Grabbing the body of the serpent, Theo pulled Ulysses up the slope. The moment he regained his feet, my brother touched the butt of his staff to the snow; if he slipped again, he could teleport back to that spot. Mephisto sent away the hamadryad.

After that, we proceeded with more caution.

The slickness came from water running over the snow. The glacier here was melting, and there was a smell like springtime in the air. Now that I was no longer playing, I could hear the tinkling of tiny streams and the
drip-drip
of icicles hanging from Father’s cage, though, perhaps cage was no longer the right word.

The other prisoners were confined behind straight thorny bars. Father, on the other hand, was ensnared in something that might once have been a cage, but was now a jumble of twisted, thorny vines. Only one remained fairly straight, warping in only slightly, so that it was still a good two feet from his body. The other eight curled about him like hungry vines, pressing their painful barbs into the flesh of his shoulders and chest. His arms were trapped, and he could barely move his head. Scratches and scabs marred his cheeks. If these thorns were even a tiny bit as painful upon physical contact as they were to our eyes when we looked at them, it was a wonder Father was even conscious, much less smiling.

Father looked ghastly. His face was gaunt and pale and scratched in many places. His gray hair and beard had grown long and unkempt. His clothes were in tatters and through the holes the bones of his ribs were clearly discernable beneath his skin. His eyes, however, were as fierce and intelligent as ever. They lit with delight upon Gregor and the youthful Theo.

“It worked!” His voice was but a faint shadow of his normal robust baritone. “Gregor lives!”

Gregor planted his staff and shook his head. “No, Father, I was never dead.” With the briefest glance at Ulysses and Logistilla, he added, “It is too long a story to tell now. Sufficient to say I was held against my will but was rescued by the family at Miranda’s insistence.”

Father turned to me, and his eyes rested on the green wings of light protruding from my shoulders. He did not seem surprised. “They match your eyes nicely!”

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk back home.” Erasmus came to stand near the cage, averting his face so as not to look directly at the bars. While I had not heard him scream, he must have looked at the thorns, for there were tears of blood on his cheeks. “How do we get you out of here?”

“That should be easy enough.” Theo grinned and unlimbered his staff.

Father’s welcoming smile faded. He shook his head. “I am in a trap from which there is no escape. It was noble of you children to come here to rescue me. Foolish, but noble! Yet, I fear it was futile.” The thorn-bars constricted him terribly, but he turned his head the little bit he could and glanced toward the Tower. “Quickly. You must leave now, before the Torturers come. Hurry!”

Erasmus barked a laugh. “You can’t seriously think we’d come all this way and leave without freeing you!”

Theo spoke brusquely. His tone reminded me of his soldiering days. “Describe the situation in detail, Father. Perhaps we can find a way out you haven’t considered.”

“Quite unlikely,” snorted Father, “but I suppose you deserve that much for your efforts. Here is the situation: I am in a cage with nine bars. Each bar is made from a hair off the head of one of you. The hairs have been enchanted so they are in a magical sympathy with your staffs. Every time you use your staff, the corresponding bar contracts.”

“Oh, is that what they did with those hairs?” Ulysses murmured. “Smeg!”

Several of my siblings glared at Ulysses. Father continued, “One of the bars—I do not know to which staff it belongs—is currently embedded into my flesh, poised to drive a thorn directly into my heart. If its corresponding staff is used again, I will die. If a bar near it contracts too much, I will be forced onto the thorn and die. If you use your staffs to free me … you will kill me.”