Ruby Shadows

  The heat was really getting to me and I had to admit I was glad of the white wrap Laish had given me to wear. It seemed to reflect some of the merciless sunlight which beat down on my head like a golden hammer, blow after silent blow.

  “Oh, I’m so stiff!” I moaned as I swung myself down from Kurex’s saddle. Laish didn’t hold out a hand to help me—maybe he knew I would refuse his offer. He simply sat down on a low rock in the shade of the tree.

  The tree was dead black with large, black waxy leaves that looked like sleeping bats—or maybe that was just glaring sun making things look strange. It grew at the center of an oasis of sorts—though not a very nice one. A pool filled with black, sluggish water that looked a lot like the water of the river Styx was surrounded by flat gray rocks. These made natural seats and after I had walked around some, I came and sat on one that was deep in shadow.

  “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.”

  “Thank you, that is all I ask. Now come, we must be going.”

  He led Kurex back out onto the shifting sands and we resumed our journey in silence.

  Chapter Twenty

  Laish

  We made better time to the end of Minauros than I had hoped. Gwendolyn was silent during our trip but I felt that at least it was a thoughtful silence. One thing I liked about her was that she wasn’t blindly prejudiced against me as so many were against demons. Maybe in time she would find a way to trust me again, despite what she had seen in the Hotel Infernal. I could only hope and wait. In the meantime, I was being careful not to pressure her. I knew very well that by trying to draw her to me I would only push her away.

  I did wish I could have found a way to get her to eat some. She’d had nothing substantial since the sandwich she’d eaten yesterday before we entered Baator. I didn’t count the little piece of fruit she’d eaten that morning—it was hardly one bite. Traveling through Minauros was a grueling journey. I watched her anxiously as we went—wanting to be certain she wasn’t swaying in the saddle. If she got too faint and weak I could always force her to eat but I didn’t want to do that. It would erase any last vestige of trust she might feel for me and I had an idea I would never gain it back.

  Still, she couldn’t be allowed to starve herself to death. I watched her covertly from the corner of my eye as Kurex plodded across the constantly shifting sands.

  Her face was impassive, making it impossible to guess what she thought. Sometimes I caught a little of her internal monologue—because we were in my own realm where my powers were strongest and because she thought so very loudly. But I needed to be close to her—it helped especially to be touching and I was being careful not to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.

  The little white lily-moth that had somehow followed us through the barrier between Baator and Minauros still clung to her shoulder like a good-luck talisman. I wondered again how it had gotten here, how it had gotten so far from home. Just seeing the tiny creature made me ache with a pain so old I had almost forgotten it. What was it that humans called it? That feeling of missing the place you once belonged and can no longer go back to? The name escaped me but I felt it now and fought it—such emotions would do me no good in this quest. We needed to press onward to our goal.

  I was watching the sands, leading Kurex carefully around yet another sand trap when I heard Gwendolyn say, “Oh!” in a soft, awed voice. Looking up, I saw that we had found our way to the edge of the Desert of Death.

  We had come at last to the Jealous Heart. But whether we could get through it or not would be entirely up to Gwendolyn.

  * * * * *

  Gwendolyn

  “Where did that come from all of a sudden?” I asked, looking at the huge m
ountain that rose suddenly before us. It was huge, so tall I couldn’t see its peak. Something so vast should have been visible a long way off—we should have seen it the whole time we were traveling towards it. Instead, it had simply appeared, just like the Iron Spike and the city of Baator had both suddenly appeared. I was beginning to think this was the norm for Hell—things just blinking into existence like they’d been there all along. But it was no less unsettling for all that.

  But even freakier than the suddenly-appearing mountain was the vast, dark opening I saw in its side. It looked like the mouth of a cave—twenty feet high and at least ten feet across. But though it was wide enough and facing towards the sun, no light penetrated its entrance. It was pitch black inside—like someone had hung some kind of black-out curtain across the entrance. Just looking into that yawning mouth and its endless slice of midnight made my heart do a funny little skip in my chest—like it was trying to get up into my throat.

  “Ah—the Jealous Heart,” Laish said, stopping about twenty feet from it. “We have arrived even sooner than I had hoped. We can stop here for the night.”

  “No,” I said, looking at him. “No, I don’t want to stop. Let’s go on—let’s go as far as we can.”

  He frowned at me. “I don’t think you understand. There are necessary preparations one must make before crossing through the Jealous Heart. Steps that while tedious, are necessary for a safe passage. And then there is the small matter of the barrier which is at the exact center of the cavern.”

  “The barrier?” I faltered. Somehow I’d managed to forget about the fact that we had to pay the Sin Tax in order to move between one circle of Hell and the next.

  “Indeed.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you wish to pay the tax now…or later?”

  Remembering my vow to myself, I lifted my chin.

  “I don’t want to pay it at all—or at least, not the way we’ve been paying it,” I told him. “I mean, it’s called a Sin Tax, right? Not a lust tax. So it stands to reason that there must be another way to pay the tax. Some other, uh, sin I can commit.”