Suddenly, a huge and greasy-looking tentacle shot up from the water's depths, wrapping around one of the figures and dragging it down.
"They were trying to escape," Danube said.
Finally, the craft pushed out of the mist, and they looked up at the rocky shore that became visible. Huge black buildings jutted from the stone, and beyond them stood tall ebon towers, a palace of the damned. As the boat glided to shore, Gabrielle began to make out the lumbering shapes of the dead. They shambled along the narrow streets, aimless and tortured by the nothingness.
"The City of the Dead," Danube repeated. The boatman eased the craft onto the rocky bank, and Danube took Gabrielle's hand to guide her onto the shore.
"Where do we go to look?" Gabrielle asked.
"He'll be headed toward the palace," Danube said.
They made their way across the jagged ground between the shore and the edge of town. In a few moments they were standing on one of the powdery streets. The dead figures moved around them as if they were not there, or if they bumped into them, the dead moved back a few steps and went around.
Gabrielle's flesh tingled, crawled. The faces were rotted masses of tattered flesh and open sores which oozed gray-black slime.
Eyes were missing from sockets, teeth from mouths; and chests were ripped open, revealing blackened organs that threatened to spill from the containment of skeletal frames.
Gab pulled back and grabbed Danube's arm when a figure passed her, the snaking ropes of its intestines dangling down its side and dragging along the ground.
"This is damnation. Spiritual decay" Danube said. “Ruined souls manifest as we can perceive them.”
"Hell is worse?"
"This is torment. In hell there is torture. All of it unrelenting."
They eased on through the narrow pathways, stepping over figures too badly damaged to do more than drag themselves along in the dirt.
"Where are they trying to go?" Gabrielle asked.
"Somewhere it doesn't hurt."
She was reminded of images she had seen, paintings and depictions of Europe during the plague. This was a thousand times worse, because waste and deterioration was all she could see.
The path that led toward the castle wound upward through a twisting rise of rock and debris. On an outcropping crouched the grimy
Gnelf
Master, a dark robe draped around his form, a sickle clutched in one hand. He was almost a parody, except that he was too hideous.
His leering face turned toward them as they approached, and his yellowed eyes raked over Gabrielle.
"You've come for your little one?"
Gab clenched her teeth. "What have you done with her?"
"The master took her up toward the castle.”
“You mean Simon?" Danube asked.
The laugh was sickening. “The mage who first summoned us."
"What's he trying to do with my daughter?"
“He wants to offer her to our father."
She looked to Danube, who nodded in confirmation. It was as he had predicted.
"You filthy bastards have a father?" she asked
Gnelf
Master.
"We call him father. He has sat on his black throne for eternity."
"What does he want with my daughter?"
The thing nodded toward the dead figures that picked their way aimlessly across the stones. “He is the ruler over all of them, but they are not fresh and pure."
"What does Simon expect to gain?"
"Knowledge," the
Gnelf
said. "Strength. More powerful magic. We slept here until he summoned us. Not many have learned to call on us in recent centuries."
"You welcomed a chance to get out of this place and tear things up."
He flexed the muscles of his arm. "I was given this form, your brain helped shape it for me. I can use this for a long, long time. And if you lived here, wouldn't you want to flee from time to time?"
"Take us to the girl," Danube said.
"Find her yourself. I have other tasks to perform." Danube stepped toward him. You will take us."
A snarl rasped from the creature's throat. "You seek to command me?"
"I will rebuke you to the depths of hell where all of the unrighteous belong."
Sullenly, the
Gnelf
eyed him for a moment before finally giving a slow nod. Hopping down from its stone perch, it began to move up the path, steadying itself with the shaft of the sickle.
Gabrielle and Danube supported each other as they climbed. The cracks and openings in the ground made each footstep a challenge, but they moved quickly up the ridge and finally to the broad canyon which encircled the palace.
The stone bridge which led across was narrow, and looking down into the abyss, Gabrielle saw the glowing slime that coursed through the gorge far below. It was a bright magenta ooze, and slithering through it were reptiles, thousands upon thousands, small and giant.
She gripped Danube's arm tighter as they made their way across the bridge. Somehow she knew what a fall would mean. Sinking into the sickening slime would be bad enough, but to be trapped there with the snakes would be eternal terror.
The cries of the people mired below rose to her ears, and she tried to shut out their screams as she passed.
Finally the
Gnelf
opened a huge door and led them into a narrow black foyer. Torches blazed there, emitting a light that was almost green. Shadows flickered off the obsidian walls, and the smell of decay drifted to Gabrielle's nostrils.
The screams that came from somewhere far back in the palace were high pitched and filled with agony. The sounds of torture, of the searing of flesh and the breaking of bones mingled with the cries of agony.
"Welcome, “ said the
Gnelf
. "I am sure we will find your daughter here. Somewhere."
The halls were narrow and twisting, jagging back and forth around corners stained with blood. Bones lined the corridors, and the hideous beings that crawled in and out of the crevices had glowing eyes and slimy bodies that gleamed in the dim light.
Heaven walked past them, wincing at the sight of them as Simon tugged her along. He held her hand the way a parent might lead a child, but he was far less gentle than her mother. She knew he held her hand not to insure her safety but to keep her from fleeing.
He showed no sympathy for her inability to keep up and paid little attention when she cried out upon seeing something frightening. Controlling her tears, she scurried along at his side, trying to keep up with his long strides.
The
Gnelfs
led the way down the long corridor, their small forms clad in dark brown robes much like the one Friar Tuck wore in her Robin Hood book. Their cackles echoed through the hallway, and they turned back occasionally to leer at her.
Simon ignored them, his eyes focused straight ahead. He was excited. Heaven could sense that. Like he was looking forward to opening a Christmas present.
She wondered why he was taking her along. She didn't feel fear exactly, but the thought that he might harm her did cross her mind. He had hurt others. She couldn't stop thinking about what he'd done to Althea, and she knew he was responsible for the
Gnelfs
bothering her all this time.
The
Gnelfs
were nasty, but they didn't seem as threatening anymore. They were concentrating on what was ahead also. She bit her lip, wondering if what awaited was worse than the
Gnelfs
.
She hoped Mommy would follow her somehow. If there was a way, she knew Mommy would find it. Mommy wouldn't let her be harmed without putting up a real struggle.
They rounded another corner and walked up a slick black slope which stretched up to a pair of tall black doors. The
Gnelfs
quickly swarmed around the doors, their hands scrambling for the latch.
Then, together, they pulled the doors back, holding them open for Simon. A broad smile crossed his face, and he walked forward with Heaven. They moved through the doors, into a broad, high-ceilinged room.
Heaven looked through the darkened room, the only illumination from purple stones set in the walls. Simon continued to smile, and dropped to one knee, his head bowed.
"I have come to you, Master," he whispered.
She closed her eyes. She did not want to look at what she saw.
~*~
Danube held Gabrielle's arm with his bandaged hand as they rushed through the narrow corridors, kicking aside the oozing things that moved beneath their feet. Gab's heartbeat quickened. She was not feeling exhaustion now, but confusion and the unreality of it all made her almost dizzy.
She kept thinking they were going to round one of the corners and find Heaven's body torn to shreds or in the jaws of one of those nightmare beings. Hell had always seemed a concept, a myth. Not that she hadn't believed it in a way, but she'd never expected to encounter it in this literal sense. This wasn't hell, she realized, but it was bad enough.
And whatever it was, she didn't want her daughter here. It was no place for a child. She wanted to claw to bits the man who'd brought her here. Who was this bastard that he thought he could use her daughter to get what he wanted? Whatever they found when they caught up with him, she would fight to save Heaven. Some way or other she would free her daughter.
There had to be a way to save Heaven. Nothing they had ever done could make them deserve this.
Gab had plans for Heaven, for her education, her life, and they—
dammit
—would be fulfilled. No devils or magicians would destroy that.
She was still thinking that as they moved through the final narrow passage behind the
Gnelf
and watched him climb up a slope toward some open doors. They were about to pass inside, into what Gabrielle realized was a huge throne room illuminated with glowing stones, but their movements were hindered when the
Gnelf
in front of them was joined by a dozen others: The
Gnelfs
swarmed forward, and before Gab could struggle, their hands closed on her, tugging her away from Danube and dragging her forward.
As she was hurried toward the center of the room, she could see Heaven standing beside the magician who crouched before the throne.
The child's face was turned away from the figure on the throne, and though her eyes were shut, she had no visible marks of injury.
Gabrielle started to rush to her daughter, but the
Gnelfs
held her, their tiny hands closing on her forearms, gripping them so tightly that she could not move. She looked back toward Danube, but he, too, was in the grip of the small green monsters.
She jerked her head around toward Heaven, looking past her at the figure on the throne. She had not yet focused on him, but now she braced herself to view something hideous.
He was.
Even in the eerie glow, she could see that his flesh was like yellowish leather and was reptilian in texture. Ridges ran in parallels across his skull, and his face was cracked and lined.
Dark robes covered this being's frame, but the hands which rested on the arms of the obsidian throne were like claws, their thick yellow nails protruding three inches.
These aspects of its appearance, though strange and alien to her, were not what made the thing so frightening, however. It was its eyes, or the mysterious absences of them in the sockets. These were not empty like the cavernous eyes of a skull. They were like voids which swallowed light and substance, and looking into them was chilling. It was like peering into eternity, and somehow Gabrielle knew she would never come any closer to eternity than this point.
As the creature's head turned toward her, she tried to look away, afraid of meeting its gaze. Then she realized it could not see her. It seemed to sense her presence, however, and its forehead tilted forward almost imperceptibly in a greeting.
The magician got to his feet now, one of his gaunt hands extended in her direction. “You see, Master?" he called to the figure on the throne. "I've delivered them to you. All of them. The mother and daughter, their love intact."
He turned toward Danube. “And him. The one who has walked the earth for so long, the wanderer, the vagabond. He has tortured your children. He has hampered the efforts of many adepts, and he is the son of him who brought sorrow to your land, the man who delivered the One to his enemies and changed the course of destiny for all of us."
"I know who he is as well as I sense the offerings you have brought," the figure said, the voice deep and unearthly. “Why have you disturbed me, magician?”
“To bring you these gifts."
Slowly the being's hand rose, gesturing toward a shadow-covered wall. With that movement, the stones seemed to glow brighter, chasing back the darkness.
On the walls, figures were chained into place, pale, emaciated beings barely clinging to existence. When they realized they were in the light, they began to wail and beg for release. A couple of them even began to dance as much as their chains would allow, a futile effort to capture pleasure or at least escape the retribution of the creature on the throne.