The glossy blue-vinyl overcoat made her look like some kind of pop baroness. A black velvet choker girded her throat. Her hair hung perfectly cropped in a straight line, cut at the same level as the choker; it was lank and shiny as black silk. The burning phosphorus of a street light diced her face into a puzzle of hard, pretty angles. Her eyes were so big and bright they dominated her face almost surrealistically.
“I’m No-name,” she said.
“No-name?” Walter almost laughed. “That’s some name.”
“I’m not allowed to say a name, Walter.”
“How do you know
my
name?”
“Because I’m a soothsayer.” She seemed to hug back into the shadows of the cubby. Her arms pressed together at her sides made her breasts push out.
God, she’s pretty,
Walter took time to think.
“I was a Dactyl-class sorceress for the court of King Mursil the First,” she continued, whispering. “I was executed for heresy—I deliberately spoke a false prophecy to the king—so I went to Hell. I’ve been here for a long time.” Another nudge back into the shadows.
This only distracted Walter more. “What are you—Are you hiding in there? You seem—”
“Yes, I’m hiding. I’m only safe in the Netherspheres. When I sneak into the Mephistopolis, I’m considered a fugitive.”
“Why?”
“Because I refuse to work for Lucifer’s Diviners. I’m considered an offense against public law. The Golems are looking for me, probably as we speak.”
Golems?
Walter wondered. “Well, why come here? Why not stay where it’s safe?”
“Because it’s not in my future.
You
are.”
“Huh?”
“This is a dream, Walter.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I’m a presage...”
Walter frowned. “If you can tell the future, tell me mine.”
“The future isn’t mutable, Walter. If it was, then I could change it, couldn’t I? I could change it by giving you options. But that’s not possible, so what point is there in telling you?”
Even as smart as Walter was, that one went right over his head. A distracted glance into the street showed him that the Griffins had gone, leaving the corpse stripped to the bone. Then the bones got up and falteringly walked away.
“You want to kill yourself, don’t you, Walter?”
The question shook him. He bowed his head. “Yes.”
“Because of a girl?”
“Yes.”
“You love her but she doesn’t love you?”
What could he say?
“Don’t despair,” No-name told him. “Rejoice in your life.”
Without Candice, I don’t have one.
This was pathetic.
I’M pathetic,
he thought. He looked back at No-name. “Well? Tell me. What difference does it make? Will Candice ever love me?”
“That prospect is ... unlikely,” No-name said. Unlikely. A polite way of saying no. But he’d always known that, hadn’t he? He was only eighteen years old, had virtually no experience whatsoever with women, but he knew this, and even though he knew it, hearing it from No-name felt like a wall had fallen down on him. “Should I do it then?” he asked now. “Should I kill myself?”
“I can’t advise you.”
Was it a rumbling he heard? Some weird noise that seemed to be coming from behind No-name.
She spoke more heatedly now. “No, the future isn’t mutable, Walter. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to embrace your destiny.”
Embrace your destiny,
he repeated the arcane words. Everyone was telling him that. But as far as he could reason, his destiny involved nothing more than blowing his head off in his dorm room tonight.
No-name’s eyes widened, and she smiled very brightly at him. “They got me.”
“What?”
“I’ll see you soon,” and then the old brown bricks of the cubby broke apart from behind; several of the bricks almost hit Walter in the head. He jumped back, his heart lurching. The wall had been broken apart from behind and now two very tall
things
had grabbed No-name. She didn’t scream; in fact, she barely reacted at all. The two man-shaped things that grabbed her looked almost ten feet tall, with just leaning lumps for heads and stout crudely featured hands, like dolls made of clay by a child. The closer Walter looked, however, the more he guessed that the things
were
made of clay. They were drab brownish-gray and smelled of a riverbed at low spate. One held No-name securely upright by wrapping its fat arms around her shoulders. The other one twisted her head round and round on her neck, until—
crunch
—it came off.
The head was dropped into a garbage can, and No-name’s body was heaved into the middle of the street where it was descended upon at once by a gaggle of Griffins. The Griffins squawked merrily, and stripped No-name’s corpse clean in just moments.
The two Golems looked at Walter with totally blank faces. Then they lumbered off.
I’ll see you soon
, Walter remembered the girl’s last words to him. He looked at her bones in the street. “I don’t think so,” he muttered and jogged away. Only then did he fully see the crested street sign at the corner: CHYME RESERVOIR AVENUE.
(II)
He was called many things, and his name bore many contradictions. Lucifer, for instance, meant “The Light of the Morning”; hence, he was sometimes called the Morning Star. He was called Eosphoros, Iblis, the aduw Allah. But he was lately and more popularly referred to as Satan. Once, in eons past, he’d been the bringer of light. Now he was the bringer of darkness.
He very much liked the darkness.
“Good, good,” he whispered to himself. He was looking out at the village street, peeking from behind the teetering todesfall. From within the crude building’s plank-wood walls, he could hear moaning.
They don’t even wait for them to die before throwing
them in, the Light of the Morning thought. He relished the notion. Every village had many todesfalls—in these times? Sometimes they were simply pits, or fenced-in wastelands of death. The more sophisticated townships erected roofed buildings for the purpose, and Bordeaux, by now, had erected many such buildings. The stench wafting through the wood slats was beyond most human imagination, even in this filthy age. The bacillus pestis and pneumonitis had brought a beautiful black wave of death over Europe. He hoped the stench of rotting flesh would rise up high enough to offend God.
“Good, good,” he whispered again. He was looking out in glee, a child peeking around the stairs at the Christmas tree. Men in hoods and masks carted more bodies to the todesfall, where they flopped over like long white sacks.
The only sound was the incessant buzzing of flies amid their feast.
An Oni stood beside him, for protection, he presumed, not that the aduw Allah needed protection; his generals had insisted. “You could be blemished, my lord,” one, named Sherman, had told him. But Satan was immortal.
“From plague?” he asked.
“Villagers could set upon you,” Sherman reminded. Immortality was one thing, disfigurement was sorely another. Why was it that he, one of the wisest beings of history, hadn’t thought of that? In an earlier time, he would’ve destroyed Sherman for suggesting something so offensive but over ages, he’d matured as well. Satan had become a sensible monarch. “Let me go with you, my lord—at the very least,” Sherman entreated, “or several of my best-trained Flamma-Troopers.”
“No, there isn’t sufficient power.”
“The sorcery is so new. At least test it first, on someone else. On me, anyone. I implore you, lord.”
“No.” Lucifer smiled at this disheveled general who had slaughtered thousands without compunction. “The Capnomancers at the Synod have assured my safety.” But for a moment, he felt neutered. All his power, and the limitless-ness of his kingdom—and he had to worry about energy constraints. It didn’t seem fair. “Dear general, there’s husbandry in Heaven,” Lucifer took the line from Shakespeare, “and here too.” At least he was good-natured enough now to admit that his power wasn’t absolute.
He’d agreed to the Oni. It was indestructible—and smarter than a Golem-forged of black granite carved out of Hell’s deepest and most cursed quarry, and made malleable by the most ingenious Animation Spells. No one would be “disfiguring” the Morning Star while the Oni was present.
It stared at him—with no face—as he continued his secret vigil. The dead were piling up now, in human drifts.
Good, good,
he just kept thinking,
good, good...
A little girl staggered down the dirt road, sucking her thumb and in rags. Her face was a pie of bubos. A masked man raced up, hit the girl in the head with an iron bar, and threw her onto the next death-cart. In the distance, the todesfalls that had been filled to capacity were set ablaze. Lucifer could smell it.
An astonished voice surprised him.
“Who ... are you?”
Another man, another death-carrier. Fleas churned in his black hood, and the cloth covering his mouth billowed as he spoke.
Satan looked at the man and smiled warmly. “I am the light of each morning that you will see, for the rest of your life.”
“How many more such morns will there be for me?”
Iblis extended his hand to the great morning sun. “Just this one, my friend.”
“You are a soothsayer?”
Eosphoros’ voice suddenly bloomed into white light. “I am an angel.”
“Will you save me?”
“No. I can’t. You can only save yourself. You wonderful pitiful people will just never understand that, will you?”
The man trembled in his black garb. “Will I die hastily?”
“You will die a slow death. You will die in utter agony. Then you’ll come to me.”
“Christ, have mercy—”
“He
won’t.”
The Oni walked around behind the man, somehow without making a sound. It picked him up, threw him into the todesfall, and closed the door.
Christ didn’t save me. Why should he save you?
“Halt.”
It was someone else, a knight, in chain mail and a white tunic emblazoned with a cross and the crest of the Council of Lyons.
“I’m not moving, am I?” Lucifer asked.
“Who are you?”
“Like you, I’m a Crusader.”
“Your voice is strange.” The knight unsheathed his broadsword. “You’re no knight of God.”
“Well, let’s just say that I used to be.”
“Are you a priest?”
“In a sense.”
“I have no time for riddles. Evil is upon the land. There is a scourge.”
“Yes. And what do you do about it?”
“I save souls. I end the misery of the children of God after hearing their confession.”
“You think that saves them?”
“I know it does. The Holy Father says it does, and the Holy Father is infallible.” The knight’s smudged face looked suddenly confused. “You needn’t fear me. My sword will save your soul.”
“You’re a little late for that.”
“Have you been touched by the pestilence?”
“I
am
the pestilence,” Satan said.
“You’re an acolyte of the Devil. Let me hear your confession and I will save your soul. The Lord God forgives everyone.”
Lucifer’s voice turned so soft it could barely be heard. “Are you certain of that?”
The knight stared. He was shaking. “I’m looking right at you, yet ... yet I can’t see your face.”
“My visage is too perfect to be looked upon. You are incapable of reckoning my perfection...”
The shadow loomed as the Oni stepped out from behind the todesfall.
“God in Heaven,” the knight croaked.
This is so petty,
Lucifer thought,
but it’s so much fun
... Then he spoke words in a language unknown to this world. His breath flowed out as luminous mist. It was a simple Possession Invocation, child’s play, but it seemed appropriate. With the arcane words, the knight’s will was polluted by a hundred insanities.
“Crusader of Lyons. There are still some women and children alive in the village. They need to be raped. Do you hear me?”
“Yes...”
“They need to be dragged into the open street and raped as the others look on. Do you hear me?”
“Yes...”
“Every survivor in this town needs to
see
your red Crusader’s cross as you are raping the women and children. Do you hear me?”
“Yes...”
“Then go.”
The knight turned and headed for the village square.