Charon turned away, again ignoring him.
"Answer me, spook!" Parry snapped, grabbing at the man"s shoulder. But his hand pa.s.sed right through the ferryman"s body.
So it was like that. Parry pondered briefly, then opened his mouth and sang: "Ferryman, hark unto me! I am the Incarnation of Evil. Answer to me: you have no choice. Fetch out that woman; Ferryman, fetch out that woman!"
The power of the song reached out and took hold of Charon as Parry"s hand could not. Just as his song had stunned the demons of the fire chamber, it stunned Charon. There had always been magic in Parry"s music, and it had power here, too.
Slowly Charon turned. He took his pole and used it to shove the filling raft away from sh.o.r.e. They floated across to where the woman was marked by a thin stream of bubbles. Then Charon reached a bony hand down and caught at something under the murky surface. The woman came up, choking; Charon had hold of her wrist. He hauled her to the raft, where she lay gasping. Then he poled it back to the sh.o.r.e to pick up the rest of his cargo.
There was a smattering of applause. Parry had made his point. He had compelled the ferryman to obey.
"In the future, Charon, if any souls become so desperate as to try to swim across, you will pick them up without fare," Parry said gruffly. "If you do not, I will remove you from this position. Do you understand?"
Slowly the grim ferryman nodded. Now Parry turned away, and saw a subdued smile of approval on Lilah"s face. He knew it was not because he had done a decent thing, but because he had made his power felt.
They remained on the raft while Charon got it loaded. Parry squatted beside the woman he had rescued. "What is your name, woman?"
"Oh, sir, I am Gretchen. I thank you for paying my fare."
"I did not pay your fare. I merely directed that you be given pa.s.sage without fare."
She lifted her head to stare at him. "Sir, if I may ask-who are you?"
"I am the Master of h.e.l.l."
Her eyes widened in shock. She collapsed in a faint. The others aboard the raft retreated from him, and some fell into the water.
Parry sighed. He would have to watch that! Naturally he would now be a figure of terror for the d.a.m.ned souls.
"I am not here to punish you, only to inspect operations," he said to them all. "You are d.a.m.ned, but I shall not make your fate worse."
They seemed only slightly rea.s.sured. He realized this was because he was also now the Father of Lies. Probably they feared that he was setting them up for worse punishment after tempting them with false hope. But those who had fallen did scramble back onto the raft.
He squatted again by Gretchen, and shook her shoulder. "Wake, woman; I spoke figuratively. I am not here to do you harm. What brought you here?"
She recovered enough to sit up. "My Lord, I lied, I cheated, I stole. I knew it would d.a.m.n my soul, but my family was going hungry, and I had to get food somehow."
Parry remembered the poor villagers of his original village. They had not been able to afford the luxury of integrity; the feudal system had kept them too low.
"You others," he asked, looking around. "Is it similar with you? You were poor, and had to cheat to survive?"
There was a murmur of a.s.sent.
Parry nodded. These were creatures of circ.u.mstance, d.a.m.ned for lives over which they had little control. It did not seem right that they be relegated to h.e.l.l for eternity. But would he be able to change that? He wasn"t sure, and was not ready to inquire.
They came to the inner sh.o.r.e. This was bleak and barren, and crowded with people who merely stood without talking. Nothing seemed to be happening.
"What is this?" Parry asked Lilah.
"This is Limbo, the first and outermost Circle of h.e.l.l," she replied. "This is where the unbaptized souls remain, neither punished nor rewarded."
"Unbaptized? Do you mean they are not Christians?"
"Many are not," she agreed. "Some have led ill.u.s.trious and blameless lives, but are d.a.m.ned in death because of their lack of faith."
"But other faiths are valid!" he protested. "They have their own facilities for the Afterlife!"
"So one would think," she agreed. "I suppose the records have not been clarified."
"We shall have to see about this. Who is in charge of the records?"
"That would be Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, one of Lucifer"s predecessors."
That meant that she had been intimate with him. Parry stifled that thought. "I shall have to talk with him, in due course."
"I think You should establish Your position first."
Surely good advice! But already he knew there would be some changes made.
"Where is the three-headed dog? Isn"t he supposed to guard the Gates of h.e.l.l?"
"Cerberus? He is in the Third Circle, with the gluttonous."
"What"s he doing there? That"s not the Gates of h.e.l.l! And since when is gluttony punished by eternal d.a.m.nation? They would have to fill that circle with Lords and Bishops and even Popes!"
"They are there," she agreed.
Parry decided not to press the point. "Cerberus will have to be moved. Who is in charge of the organization of h.e.l.l?"
"Asmodeus, the King of devils."
"Another former Incarnation of Evil?"
"Yes."
"Let"s move on."
They pa.s.sed through the Second Circle, where the carnal sinners were. "Because they l.u.s.ted, they are d.a.m.ned?" Parry asked. "What man does not l.u.s.t, on occasion?"
"Few men go to Heaven," Lilah said smugly.
"But if so many are d.a.m.ned for normal aspects of the human condition, what of the truly evil ones? The murderers, the rapists, the traitors?"
"In the lower circles," she said. "The traitors are in the Ninth Circle, the innermost one, and that is subdivided into four, for the traitors to kindred, or to their country, or to friends, or to their benefactors."
"These strike me as needless distinctions. Next thing we know, there will be a region set aside for sorcerers!"
"In the Eighth Circle, along with the hypocrites, thieves, barrators, and seducers."
"Sorcerers are d.a.m.ned?" he demanded, outraged. "But it is a legitimate profession!"
She shrugged. "I could not have corrupted You, had You not been already on the path to corruption, and Your sorcery was much of it."
"We need some revision of definitions! Great numbers of these folk do not belong here!"
She did not answer, perhaps being wiser than he in this respect. They pa.s.sed on through the Third and Fourth and Fifth Circles, seeing the gluttons, misers, and wrathful souls confined there. In the Sixth they encountered the three winged furies: hideous women with snaky hair. In the Seventh they crossed the River of Blood, for this was where the violent were confined, harried by the Hounds of h.e.l.l and harpies and centaurs.
"But this is all confused," he protested. "The hounds should be guardians, and the centaurs record keepers, because of their intellectual capacities." Now the sand on which they walked became burning hot.
A volcano rumbled, and spouted fire, and burning flakes rained down on them. The incarcerated souls cried out in anguish-and so did Parry as a fire flake singed him. "They aren"t supposed to affect You," Lilah said angrily.
"What mischief is this?"
"The mischief of some ent.i.ty who doesn"t want change," Parry muttered. "Naturally the governing demons want me to fail-and until I find that spell, I can"t do much about it."
"This is true," she said, furious. "Asmodeus is behind this, I"m sure. He remains loyal to Lucifer."
"We"d better get out of here." Parry resumed his singing, and now when the fire flakes came down, they pa.s.sed through his body without effect. He could do a lot with his voice, but knew that it would not work against one of the ranking spirits. He had seen enough, and learned enough, to know that further exploration was pointless. h.e.l.l required an entire overhaul, and he could not accomplish that until he learned the spell he needed to control the demons and d.a.m.ned souls.
Lilah opened a tunnel, and they soon climbed up out of h.e.l.l. It was now dark on the surface of the world, and Parry was tired. It was not physical fatigue, but rather the rush of experience. "Let"s go to some comfortable retreat and relax for the night," he told her. He knew better than to return to his old chamber in the monastery; they would be cleaning that out, considering him to be dead.
Lilah drew a circle on the trunk of a large oak tree, and opened a door there. Inside was a pleasant nook, with pillows. She drew him in and closed the door. He embraced her and fell asleep. Theoretically he no longer needed sleep, but he realized that there were psychological needs as well as physical ones, and his change of circ.u.mstance did not change that.
In the morning, emotionally restored, he decided to tackle the problem at the top. "I have vanquished Lucifer; I should be able to back off the souls he vanquished," he said.
"My Lord, You are as yet innocent in the ways of evil," she cautioned him. "It takes time to get fully into it. They have had many centuries. Do not face them without possession of that spell."
"But I can sing to them if I have to," he reminded her. "That conquered you and Charon."
"I am a demoness. He is-" She paused.
"Not a demon?" he prompted.
"Not exactly. But it occurred to me that his mother, Nox, who is an old acquaintance of mine, might know something."
"Nox?"
"Night. She is the oldest of the deities of our pantheon, the daughter of Chaos. She goes back before I do, which is pretty far. She married her brother Erebus, who is the Incarnation of the Darkness Between Earth and Hades, that region now parceled out between Limbo and Purgatory. In addition to Charon they generated the Incarnations of Air, Day, Fate, Death, Retributions, Dreams and others I misremember at the moment. She-"
"The mother of the Incarnations?" he asked, amazed. "But how, then, can they be offices?"
"Anything becomes boring after a time, unless constantly refreshed. I would be in a bad way if the Incarnation of Evil did not change periodically, bringing me new interest and challenge. The early Incarnations lost interest, so one by one they vacated, allowing mortals to step in and a.s.sume their positions as offices. I believe Nox is the only original Incarnation to retain her position, perhaps because of the everlasting fascination of the things she hides. If any immortal knows the secret of that spell, she might."
Parry kept his hope restrained. "Nox is an original immortal Incarnation, not a d.a.m.ned soul, but she might have learned it?"
"That"s what I think. If the secret were ever uttered under cover of night, she would know it."
"Well, let"s go see her, then!"
"Not so fast, my Lord! I am not certain she would tell You if she did know, or what payment she would demand for it."
"Payment?"
"The Kingdom of Evil does not flourish on altruism." Parry nodded. "What payment do you think she might ask?"
"I must answer, my Lord, but I do not wish to. She is the one female who knows more of the ways of pa.s.sion than I do. She is ageless, renewed at every turn of the world. If she found You appealing-"
Oh. "Let"s leave her as a last resort. If I stand to wash out, and you prefer to risk Nox rather than let me go, then we can go to her."
"You are more generous to me than Lucifer was," she said.
"Lucifer had a turn with Nox?"
"Anyone has a turn with Nox, if she desires it."
"I will stay away from her. But I must tackle the problem of h.e.l.l regardless." Parry got up, pushed open the porthole door, and climbed out of the tree. It was day outside, and this turned out to be a park. A little boy gaped, then ran back to tell his mommy. Lilah smiled, emerging and closing the panel. "She will never believe him." They moved on.
They bypa.s.sed the several Circles of h.e.l.l and went directly to the executive office. This was in a pavilion made of ice, set on a frozen lake in the deepest cavern of h.e.l.l. There was a huge throne on the ice which was empty: Lucifer"s vacated headquarters. Parry had visited him in a different, warmer hall, evidently one reserved for minor audiences. Asmodeus" office was to the right of this.
Obviously Parry"s entry had been antic.i.p.ated, because the office was clear except for Asmodeus. He had wings and horns and a barbed tail: his semblance for this duty.
"You know who I am," Parry said. "You knew it was me when you directed the rain of fire."
"I know thou art a pretender to the throne of one whose spittle thou art not worthy to wipe off thy face," Asmodeus said evenly. "Come here at last to the Circle of Traitors, fittingly enough."
"I vanquished Lucifer!" Parry retorted. "Now his office is mine, and you are bound to serve me."
"Thou hast taken advantage of freak luck during Lucifer"s carelessness. Now we have to put up with thy posturing for a month until thou receivest thy just desserts. Begone, impostor, before I chastise thee!"
"This is mutiny!" Parry exclaimed. "You know the penalty for that!"
"Get thee out of my sight, impostor-and that wh.o.r.e who aids thee!" Asmodeus gestured-and a cloud of energy surrounded Parry and Lilah. They were swept up and carried away.
In a moment the cloud dissipated. Parry found himself in a gloomy forest. "I was afraid of this," Lilah muttered. "This is the Seventh Circle."
"But that was where the River of Blood was, and the rain of fire."
"First and third rings of it. This is the second ring, which we bypa.s.sed before. This is the Wood of the Suicides."
Parry paused. "What"s so bad about this?"
"Those," she said, pointing.
From a distance charged a pack of vicious-looking dogs, slaver dripping from their maws as they bayed. "The Hounds of h.e.l.l," he said, understanding. "But we can escape them readily enough by climbing one of these trees."
"And those," she said, pointing up.
He looked, and saw a bevy of foul creatures perched on high limbs. They had the bodies and wings of gross birds, but the heads and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of old women. "Harpies," he said, understanding. "We are caught between the two horrors."