Ruby Shadows (29 page)

“
It’s past time for a
noonday meal,” Laish remarked. He was already pulling things out of
the air—a bag of feed and a large bucket of water for Kurex which
he explained would never go empty as long as the big horse was
thirsty—as well as some food for himself. Then he got out a
black-handled knife like the one he’d had before and a plate. He
poised one wrist over the plate and held up the blade. “What will
you have?”

“
Nothing.” I shook my
head. I still wasn’t certain if I should have eaten the piece of
ripe, juicy cantaloupe that morning. Would it condemn me to Hell
for a month every year? I certainly hoped not.

“
Come, Gwendolyn—you must
eat something,” Laish said reasonably. “You cannot keep going in
this heat without anything in your stomach.”

“
Actually, the heat is
what’s keeping me from wanting to eat,” I said, lying only a
little. “I can never eat when it’s this hot. And besides, I’ve been
drinking so much I’m completely full of water.” I raised my
Zephyrhills bottle and shook it at him. It was still full of cool,
clear water—a fact I was very grateful for.

Laish looked like he might try to change my
mind but then he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“
Very well—I know better
than to argue with you when you are being stubborn,
mon ange.”

“
I wish you’d stop calling
me that.” I sat down across from him, trying to ignore the food he
had conjured for himself which was mostly fresh, juicy fruit. “I
really don’t—oh!”

My little gasp of surprise was due to the
fact that I had taken off the white wrap he’d given me to wear. As
I did, something flew out of my hair.

“
What the—” I looked at
the tiny white thing flitting around—it almost seemed to glow in
the shadow. I ran my fingers quickly through my hair but didn’t
find any more, thank goodness.

“
Well, well—it appears we
have a stowaway,” Laish remarked. He leaned forward to examine the
little thing though he was careful not to touch it. “A lily-moth! I
haven’t seen one of these in untold millennia.”

“
A what?” I leaned forward
too, staring at the little thing. It flitted about and then settled
on my knee.

“
A lily-moth. They live in
the Celestial fields just outside the gates of Heaven. They drink
the nectar of the flowers that grow there which are mostly
lilies—hence the name.”

I looked closer at the tiny thing which
looked more like a butterfly than a moth to me. It was about as big
as my thumbnail and pure white except for faint gold lines that
formed curving patterns on its miniscule wings.

“
I wonder what it’s doing
here if they’re native to Heaven,” I said.

Laish shook his head. “I do not know. Be
careful not to hurt it—like all Heavenly creatures it is entirely
pure. It must have been attracted by the purity of your soul and
seen you as a refuge.”

“
Aww, poor little thing,”
I murmured, looking at the moth. “How did you get so far from home,
huh? And what in the world are you doing here?”

“
As to that, who can say?”
Laish murmured. “Lily-moths will touch only what is pure so it must
have had a long, weary journey before it found you to cling
to.”

I felt sorry for it if I was the purest
thing it could find to hold on to. The Goddess knew I don’t exactly
have the best track record—what with the dark arts I’d dabbled in,
in the not too distant past. But apparently here in Hell just not
being damned was enough to make you look squeaky clean.

“
Do you think it’s
thirsty?” I asked, pouring a capful of my Zephyrhills water out for
the little creature.

“
I suppose we’ll find
out.” Laish sounded amused.

“
What’s so funny?” I
demanded as the lily-moth crawled down my hand and went to
investigate the water.

“
You are,
mon ange.
You and your
affinity for animals. I thought it strange at first that the beasts
of Hell seemed drawn to you—first Cerberus, then Kurex. But now it
appears that the creatures of Heaven find you irresistible as
well.”

“
You said yourself, the
poor little thing is just trying to find someplace safe to land.” I
nodded down at the lily-moth who was crouched over the capful of
spring water. I couldn’t tell if it was drinking or not but its
feathery little antennae waved up and down as it touched the
surface. “Besides, witches have always had an affinity for animals.
They trust us more than other people because they know we
understand them.”

“
Truly a heartwarming
display,” Laish said. His words were sarcastic but his voice was
soft and thoughtful. “What will you do now with your little
stowaway, I wonder?”

“
Well, keep her, of
course,” I said. The moth seemed finished with the water so I put
the cap back on the bottle and transferred the delicate little
thing carefully to my shoulder. She was so light I couldn’t feel
her at all but somehow I knew she was there. “She can ride with us
if she wants,” I told Laish. “Maybe I can even get her back home
with me. I mean, I know it’s not Heaven but it’s got to be better
than this place.”

“
Her?” He raised an
eyebrow at me.

“
I don’t know—she seems
like a girl, that’s all,” I said defensively. “Look how delicate
and beautiful she is.”

“
Truly, she is,” Laish
murmured but when I glanced up, those ruby red eyes were trained on
me, not the moth.

I felt the blood rushing to my face and
looked quickly away.

“
Lunchtime’s over. We need
to get moving if we’re ever going to get out of this awful
desert.”

“
If you knew what awaited
us in the next circle, you might not be so eager to leave
Minauros,” Laish remarked, standing and brushing crumbs from his
lap.

“
Why? What are we up
against next?” I felt a surge of apprehension.

“
Stygia, as I told you, is
a frozen waste. But before we get there, we must go through the
Jealous Heart and that is a place…”

“
What?” I asked when he
trailed off. “What’s so bad about it?”

Laish sighed. “Let us just say it is a good
thing you are not terrified of insects.” He nodded at the moth.

“
What?” I felt my stomach
do a slow flip. I’m not exactly
afraid
of bugs—I’m a Florida girl,
after all which means I see a lot of them. But I don’t
exactly
love
them
either. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“
You’ll see,” he said
ominously. “All too soon, I fear. Come—let me help you back up into
the saddle.”

“
No, thanks, I can
manage,” I said coolly. I stepped out of the shade of the oasis,
intending to take the huge horse by the bridle and lead him to one
of the taller stones so I could mount in style. But I never made
it.

“
Gwendolyn, no don’t—” I
heard Laish say and then my foot slipped through the sand and I
felt myself falling. Suddenly all the sand around me was gone and I
had a confused notion of darkness filled with spots of white below
my feet.

I barely had time to scream before my fall
was stopped by a jerk that made my teeth click together. I looked
up and saw that Laish had me by the arm. There was a grim look on
his face.

“
Hold still,” he said
tightly. “I must bring you up slowly so as not to crumble the lip
of the sand trap.”

“
Sand trap?” I gasped.
“What…how…?”

“
Just be still,
Gwendolyn,” he said sternly. “And do not look down.”

Of course then I
couldn’t
help
looking down—it was almost an instinct. I peered into the
darkness and saw that the white spots I’d seen before were eyes—not
the eyes of demons, though. These were human eyes, all looking up
at me. And when I saw the eyes, I couldn’t help seeing the faces
they were set in—faces which were all twisted into expressions of
silent agony. Some were crying, some of them seemed to be shrieking
but I couldn’t hear anything coming out of their distorted
mouths.

“
Laish!” I exclaimed,
still looking, trying to make sense of the dark pit after the glare
of the sunlight. “There are
people
down here.”

“
I know,” he growled as he
pulled me up very slowly. “Stop looking at them.”

But I couldn’t. Because as my eyes adjusted,
I saw more and more. There must have been hundreds of people—mostly
men—looking up at me from down in the pit. Some appeared to be
howling or screaming and all seemed to be in the most awful
pain.

Then I saw the reason why.
Each and every one of them was pierced by a sharp stick—impaled on
a stake that ran through their bodies and emerged from either their
chest or back. Clearly the stakes were piercing vital organs and
causing pain and damage that would have killed someone back in the
Mortal Realm. But of course, this was Hell—so the souls I was
seeing were stuck there, being impaled for all eternity—they
literally could
not
die.

“
Laish,” I gasped as he
finally pulled me over the lip and away from the pit. “Oh my
Goddess, those
people
…”

“
Those rapists, you mean,”
he said shortly, pushing me back to the shadow of the tree and the
oasis.

“
They…but
they…”

“
Are there because of
their own actions,” he finished for me. “Do not spare them a second
glance or any of your pity, Gwendolyn—they had none for their
victims in life. Now in death they pay for their sins.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend the
horror I’d just seen. As I watched, the shifting sands of the
desert rose and settled, blocking my view of the awful pit. Soon it
was completely covered and no one that hadn’t seen it would have
believed there was a hole filled with silently screaming people
just below the sandy surface.

“
That was…awful,” I
whispered weakly.

“
No, that was Minauros,”
Laish said, still sounding grim. “You needn’t look so horrified,
Gwendolyn—this is Hell, after all. It is a place of eternal torment
and damnation.”

“
Yes, I know. I mean, I
know it
cognitively,”
I said. “But to actually
see
it…”

“
I warned you not to
look,” he said shortly. “Come, let’s get you back on Kurex’s back.
This time I will help you.”

“
All right,” I said
humbly. “I didn’t know that pit was there or I wouldn’t have tried
to get on myself. Is…is that the only one?”

“
Come here.” He pulled me
to him and stood behind me. Then he crouched down so that his cheek
was pressed to mine and we were both looking out across the vast,
sandy expanse of the desert.

“
Laish—” I started to
protest but he paid no attention.

“
Look, Gwendolyn,” he
said, and the growl was back in his voice. “Look as I look and see
what I see.”

Something strange happened
then—I suppose it was a kind of magic
.
Suddenly as his warm, cinnamon
scent filled my senses, I saw what was really out there in that
huge desert.

The sand was suddenly
gone. In its place were hundreds—no,
thousands—
of pits. Most were filled
with tortured souls but a few glowed an ominous red. I concentrated
on those and saw they were filled with lava, moving sluggishly as
it flowed through the underground caverns to some unknown
destination.

“
It flows to the Lake of
Fire, in the very center of Minauros,” Laish murmured, as though
he’d heard what I was thinking. “That place where I was cast when I
first—”

“
When you what?” I asked,
trying to look at him, but his cheek was still pressed to mine.
“You actually went
into
the Lake of Fire? And lived to tell about
it?”

“
Never mind. It was many
millennia ago.” He pulled away abruptly, taking the strange vision
with him. Now when I looked at the desert, I saw only a vast sweep
of sand. But knowing that it was honeycombed by so many pits made
me shiver.

“
Are we…do we have to go
back out onto the sand? I mean, will it support our weight?” I
asked as Laish lifted me easily onto Kurex’s back.

“
There are paths between
the pits,” he said. “I know you cannot see them but I can. Why do
you think I have been leading Kurex as we journeyed through
Minauros?”

“
But—”

“
Gwendolyn…” He looked up
at me, one hand on my leg. “You’ll simply have to trust me. There
are many horrors here in the Infernal Realm—more than your mortal
mind can count or imagine. If you tried, it would drive you mad. So
trust me to take you through them and I swear, I will not lead you
astray.”

The look in his eyes made me bite my lip. I
heard what he wasn’t saying—the longing to regain my trust after
what I’d seen him become…what I’d seen him do. But I didn’t know
how to answer that—or if I could ever give him what he wanted.

“
All right,” I said at
last, not knowing what else to say. “I…I’ll try.”