Still I climbed, and passed more hopeless souls, and came finally to what I had expected to find: an arched doorway large enough to allow an elephant to pass through with room to spare.
And above that door were letters. They were in a script I had never seen, but somehow I understood their meaning. Iron letters twenty feet tall spelled SHEOL.
I almost laughed, for of course the pronunciations were so very close. Shoals. Sheol.
Except that one meant a dangerous and concealed peril beneath the surface of water; and the other was an ancient word, a Hebrew word, though I suspected it had come down to them from more ancient peoples still, from cursed, forgotten cities at the edge of wastelands.
Sheol.
In English: hell.
20
MESSENGER HAD TOLD ME THAT THOSE WHO WON the game walked away. Those who lost the game endured punishment. Those whose minds survived the punishment were free. And those whose minds did not survive the game descended into madness and were brought to the Shoals.
To Sheol.
He’d also said—or was it Oriax—that there were those who escaped this place. But how? I did not know.
I entered the gate and there, as if the thought had summoned her, stood Oriax. Ah, but not quite the Oriax I had known. At first glance she might be mistaken for the old Oriax, but as I looked I saw that her beauty, the flawless skin, the Victoria’s Secret body, the bewitching eyes all felt thin, like a layer of paint applied over something very different. The image of beauty kept fluctuating, growing lighter and dimmer, clearer and then more fractured, like trying to get a TV signal on an old set with nothing but a wire coat hanger antenna.
“Well, well, if it isn’t mini-Messenger. I must confess: I did not expect to see you here so soon.”
It was her voice, but not, for the irresistible seduction was absent. That slithering, insinuating, fingers-stroking-bare-flesh voice was ragged now, roughened, coarsened. This was the voice of barely contained rage, not the voice of promised pleasures beyond imagining.
She advanced on me, but stopped quite suddenly. I believe it was because she saw that I was not responding. I believe absent her magic, Oriax knew she had no power over me.
“Why have you come, Mara?”
“To find Ariadne, if she’s here.”
She laughed, but oh, it was not Oriax’s wry mockery, but a parody of same, a parody performed by a less-than-convincing actor.
“Madness lies within. Do you seek madness, Mara?”
“Your hooves are showing.”
They were. The boots flickered in and out, a bit of computer graphics trickery when the software has been hacked. Oriax was the green screen onto which visual lies had been projected, but the special effects no longer quite worked.
“It’s this place, isn’t it?” I asked, struggling to wring any evidence of fear from my voice, trying to sound strong and unafraid. “You can’t maintain the illusion here. The true Oriax is peeking out from behind the curtain.”
“The true Oriax.” She almost whispered it, and yes there were slithering snakes in that voice, but now they were cobras reared up and ready to strike. “You want to see the true Oriax? Follow me, little fool.”
She turned and began walking, supremely confident that I would follow. And what choice did I have? I didn’t know this place. I had no map. I had Oriax.
We walked down a cavernous stone hallway that widened and grew as we went, and with each step Oriax herself grew. The seductress’s skin was shed in bits and pieces, as if she was disrobing. Or, more aptly perhaps, like a snake molting.
She grew and as she grew, her skin roughened to something more toad-like than human. Her hair fell from her head in locks and then in hunks and finally all at once, revealing a ridged and horned head. From her once-gym-toned behind a tail sprouted, lengthened, and then split in two: whipping, furious serpents, fanged mouths slashing at the air.
The light, too, grew as we advanced, a strange light of a color I had known since first entering the world of the messengers and their foes. It was the yellow of rotting teeth, the yellow of new bruises and dripping pus. It was the yellow of the mist.
Oriax turned to face me and I nearly bolted in panic, but fascination kept me rooted to the spot. Oriax was outlined against the yellow light that pulsed sullenly from some vast open space behind her. She was no longer anything like a human, yet still female, an exaggerated comic book fantasy of femininity.
She was naked, clothed now only in a reptile’s skin. Her eyes were blazing red orbs, spheres of blood punctuated with vertical black slits. Her nose was twin gashes that widened and narrowed with each audible breath. Her hands were claws, her feet now unconcealed hooves. Power and malice radiated from her. She stood at least ten feet tall, huge and menacing.
“Do you like me now, mini-Messenger? Do you still fantasize about me sneaking into your bed some night? Will you still shudder ever so coyly at my breath on your neck?”
I should have been terrified. Once upon a time I would have been a puddle of tears and terror on the stone floor. But in revealing herself, Oriax had lost her power over me. This was the Oriax Messenger knew all along, the Oriax he had so effortlessly resisted even as I had practically swooned.
“You know, Oriax,” I said, reaching back to my high school mean girls’ days, “you used to be hot. But you’ve really let yourself go.”
I had seen Oriax snarky, irritated, frustrated, subtle, and cruel, but I had never seen her lose her temper.
She grew another two feet, a monster of snake skin and ebony hooves. Her tail whipped around her waist, reaching for me, snapping serpent jaws at me. She roared in a voice that by sheer force of moving air pushed me back. She bared fangs large enough to impale me.
But my fear of her was lessened, rather than heightened. I recognized impotent rage when I saw it. She could not harm me. In fact, I suspected, she could not touch me. Not here, not in her home.
“Take me to Ariadne,” I said.
She screamed a foul curse I cannot repeat here.
“In the name of Isthil and her messengers, I command you to take me to Ariadne.”
Where did that come from? I had not planned the words; I’d barely thought the thought. I had no notion of being able to command anyone, let alone in the name of the goddess. But the words came from me, and in a strong, clear voice, too.
“You want to meet Messenger’s one true love?” she raged. “Then come, and see, and despair!”
She ran down the hall and I ran after her, albeit on shorter legs, but with the power of a messenger that allowed me to keep pace. She came to a stop when the hallway itself came to a stop, at the edge of an open space so enormous I have no ready analogy for it. A stadium could have been tossed into that space and made no more impact than a coin tossed in a lake.
It went up toward light, toward the glittering underside of the diamond. And it went down, down far beyond sight, down into lightless vastness. It stank of raw sewage and salty blood, of fear sweat, and raw meat.
The space itself was overwhelming, and the smell was overpowering, but those were not the sensations that crushed my heart in my chest. There were objects in that hollowed mountain, the objects were human beings, men and women, young and old, all hung in midair, suspended by nothing visible. They rose slowly, or fell slowly, up . . . down . . . They were like scuba divers trying to reach the surface but dragged down each time by too-heavy weights.
They were not alone. Smaller in number but quick as hornets, demons raced from form to form. They hovered close to the humans who rose, and they whispered and laughed and mocked and screamed. The demon cries became a background noise, a soundtrack of rage and hate. I could only clearly hear those closest.
You are filth.
You killed her.
You will never be free.
He cried for mercy and you gave him none!
Sadist!
Pervert!
Murderer!
The humans seemed to be in a tra
nce, jaws hanging open, eyes rolled up in their heads so that the whites were all I saw. They spoke not, nor did they move so much as a muscle. They hung suspended, helpless, tormented by their own evil deeds.
“The unforgiven,” Oriax sneered.
“Unforgiven by whom?” I asked.
“By themselves, you stupid ——. They are weighed down by their own guilt. These are but a fraction; many more, millions and billions more, fill the darkness below, and have surrendered to their fates. These few have risen toward the light. And there, mini-Messenger, Mara the backstabber, Mara the one who put the gun in Samantha Early’s hand and drove her to blow her brains out, Mara, the murderer who now tortures those no worse than herself on orders from a foul and foolish goddess who struggles to keep all of this—this!—in existence.”
Oriax’s screams had not hurt me, but her words now did. They were the truth, at least part of the truth.
Did I not deserve this same fate? Had I not caused a death?
Did evil not still live within me? Why had I come here? To do good?
Daniel was right: I had come to find a way to erase Ariadne from Messenger’s thoughts so that he might be free. Free to love me.
“Here is your moment, Mara, here is your opportunity. You are now not fully human, you are a messenger’s apprentice, a creature of the gods. And this is where you choose your path.” She no longer raged; her tail no longer whipped at me. She no longer had the Oriax voice that had weakened my resolve at times, but she had the power of truth, however incomplete it might be.
“One path is the messenger’s path: horror, the terrible guilt that grows in you with each summoning of the Master of the Game, and above all, Mara, the loneliness. Or . . .”
She let it hang, and I knew I should remain silent, I knew that anything I said would help her to destroy me, but I could not stop myself from asking.
“Or . . . what?”
“Or,” she said, “you can become one of us. You can serve Malech. You can work to end this foul system, end this universe, let it start over again and hope the results are less cruel.”
I was silent then, and this time the silence worked against me. I had not rejected her offer out of hand. She knew I was listening.
“The beauty and power that I have can be yours. Yes, Mara, you could go back to Messenger no longer the awkward, lovelorn girl, but as you saw me: irresistible, beautiful beyond description. You can go to him then, and he will want you, Mara, and only you. He knows me too well, Messenger, but you? He is already half in love with you, even as unimpressive as you are. Imagine a Mara perfected! Imagine a Mara whose most casual glance can reduce any human to slavering lust.”
Did I form the picture in my head? Yes, I confess that I did.
Did I imagine Messenger seeing me exalted, powerful, impossible to resist?
Yes. Yes.
Yes.
But what I said was, “You know, Oriax, it’s the twenty-first century, and I don’t really think I want to be some comic book fan-boy’s notion of a supervixen.”
She blinked. Stared, nonplussed.
“Actually,” I said, “I was thinking of going to medical school.”
Easy to say? No. It sounded easy, I sold it that way—breezy and facile—but no, it was not easy.
Not easy. And yet, I felt my mouth stretch into a smile.
“Maybe pediatrics,” I said to Oriax’s blank red animal eyes. “Or maybe research, if I have the science chops.” I shrugged. “And I think I do.”
Then, I took a step toward her. And another.
“Everything you said is true. I am guilty, Oriax. I have done evil. But there’s only one path forward after that: to fight evil. That’s my only redemption. I didn’t know that before, didn’t know it when I decided to come here on a selfish and cruel mission to destroy Messenger’s love for Ariadne. You’ve given me a choice, and in that you forced me to think. Your effort to tempt me only reminds me that I’m not that Mara anymore. I am a servant of Isthil, and I work to keep the balance, to resist evil, to protect the good. To keep existence from blinking out.”
“You’re a fool.”
“You made your pitch. I’ve made my choice. I’m not fool enough to want to be you.”
I saw something in her bloodred eyes then. It was not fear, no, I had no real power over Oriax. What I saw in her eyes, on that leathery face, was regret. And suddenly, with chills running down my arms and spine, I understood.
“You,” I said. “My God. You were once a messenger! You faced the choice you offered me. You chose to become what you are.”
“I am the great Oriax!” she bellowed in a voice that made the stone walls vibrate.
“You’re a magician with some tricks,” I said quietly. “Some very good tricks. But I watched your act closely, and I’ve seen the sleight of hand. Your magic no longer amazes me. I don’t want to be you, Oriax. And I don’t want to be the Mara who drove Samantha Early to her grave, not again, not ever.”
I laughed in sheer relief. It surprised me and shocked Oriax. I now knew how to free Ariadne, and, in a way, myself as well.
“I will not be Oriax,” I said. “Nor will I be the old Mara. I will be the Messenger of Fear.”
She shrank a little then. Still huge and dominating, but somehow reduced. Now it was Oriax who could not speak without revealing her weakness.
“Oriax. Take me to Ariadne.”
21
ARIADNE. HOW MANY TIMES HAD I HEARD THAT name and seethed inwardly?
Ariadne, whose face I knew from the terrifying tattoo over Messenger’s heart.
I followed Oriax to her, stepping into the void, floating through bodies rising and falling, passing screeching demons that bared their fangs at me but, like furious zoo animals, never touched me.
Ariadne floated like the others, far from the diamond above, far from the unseen depths of the pit below. A demon floated beside her whispering, “You gave him up. You sent him to torture and death, him and his entire family, all save one, and you know his fate! You forced him to become your executioner!”
The demon noticed me, his turkey neck whipping his lizard’s head around. He hissed like a furious cat.
“Leave,” I said to him.
He hissed again, but he left.
I had power. I had authority here. I had the authority of Isthil.
“Shall I tell you how this love of Messenger’s life came to be here?” Oriax said.
“No. I don’t need you. In fact, Oriax, I think it’s time for you to go. Leave me.”
My God, she obeyed! The demon who had weakened my knees and crept into dreams I wished I could forget, but never would, roared empty defiance, and then . . . disappeared.
I was alone with Ariadne. Above us, the diamond. Below us, hell itself. She did not see me, her eyes saw nothing. I don’t believe she heard me or was aware of my presence. Until I laid my hand against the side of her pretty face. A tremor went through her, and she gasped, but nothing more.
“This is the Piercing,” I said, “but you would know that. I will enter your mind, but not to find your fear this time, only to learn the truth.”
The pit, the mountain, the floating bodies and flitting demons all faded away, and I was on a narrow cobblestone street. Cars of an earlier vintage rattled by, but so did a horse-drawn cart. It was a shopping district—a display window with three dresses on my left, an enticing cascade of beautiful pastries in the window to my right. The signs read L’Atelier de Maurice and Patisserie.
My two years of French were up to the task of reading basic signs, though not much more. I was in France, but not today’s France, a France gone by. I saw pedestrians, but none with cell phones. I saw cigarettes dangling from lips, men in blue smocks and frayed suits, women in faded dresses and thick-heeled shoes. I heard a grating mechanical sound and looked up to see an airplane with impossible markings: the black cross of wartime Germany.
Down that street came a young couple in their late teens perhaps, arm in arm, laughin
g, heads tilted together, almost touching.
Ariadne.
And Messenger.
He was a very handsome boy with an easy charm and brown hair cut short. He wore a tan wool suit, no tie, a dark wool overcoat. A plaid scarf wrapped his neck and caught the sudden gust of breeze. He laughed and snatched at the scarf.
He was Messenger, but not. He was at once the same, yet so much younger. This Messenger had seen little of life. He had seen little of pain. He had known little guilt or regret. He was handsome, but he lacked the dangerous beauty and deep sadness that Messenger owned.
But for all their carefree chatter, there was something else going on, something secret. As I watched, Messenger slipped something to Ariadne. No casual observer would have made out the object wrapped as it was in newspaper, but I was no ordinary observer and I saw the revolver clearly. Then he kissed her and quickly walked away down an alley while Ariadne continued on.
I had a choice of whom to follow, but it was impossible still to resist following the young man who would someday become my teacher, my master. It was as he stepped into a small open square with a flower market exploding in brilliant spring color that the two Gestapo agents emerged from a doorway. They fell into step with him and then seized his arms. They searched him, rough hands everywhere, and when they found nothing they slapped him across the face, leaving a red welt.
Even now I had the powers that Messenger had taught me to use and I scrolled quickly ahead, watching them take Messenger, watching him sitting frightened in a small, bare room, shackled to a steel chair, helpless. He had been capable of fear then; he had been only human, just a boy.
When the guards slapped him he cried out. When they punched him and blood sprayed from the ridge of bone above his eye, he sobbed.