“If it’s so safe, why aren’t you doing it?” snapped Hawk.
“Because you’re the hero. Sit down, and I’ll tie your ankles together.”
Hawk growled something that everyone pretended not to understand, then sat reluctantly down beside the open space. Lament’s knots turned out to be excruciatingly tight but comfortingly professional. Hawk waited until he was sure everyone had a good grip on the rope, then swung his feet out over the drop. He knew there was an awful lot of nothing beneath his feet. He just knew it. Back in Haven there’d been a group of extreme sportsmen who climbed to the top of tall buildings, tied themselves to something secure, and then jumped off, just for the thrill of it. Hawk had always considered them to be complete and utter lunatics.
He took a deep breath and pushed himself off the edge and into the clouds. His head and feet quickly changed ends, and soon he was diving through the clouds, his hands held uselessly out before him. The violent air buffeted him back and forth as he fell through the clouds, which were bracingly cold and wet, and billowed all around him until he had no sense of direction apart from the falling feeling in the pit of his stomach. And then suddenly he was through and out the other side. Bright light hit him like a thunderclap. He cried out in shock as he found himself plummeting headfirst into a huge structure that seemed to fall away forever. He had brief glimpses of huge marble walls plunging by on either side of him, marked here and there with splashes of color, all details blurred by the speed at which he was falling. Vertigo sucked the breath out of his lungs as he fell on and on into something too large for him to comprehend.
And then he was jerked to an abrupt halt as the rope at his ankles snapped taut. His neck creaked painfully. His eye bulged from its socket. He flailed about with his arms, but there was nothing in reach. He turned slowly back and forth, fighting for breath. There were details all around him, but he couldn’t make sense of any of them upside down. He could see colors, mostly red, and the air was foul beyond description. And the walls, the great walls, gleaming white marble falling away forever, like a glimpse of heaven. He tried to shout up to his companions, but it was all he could do just to get his breath. He couldn’t think straight with the blood pounding in his upside down head. There was something about the walls … There was a yank on the rope, sending him spinning back and forth again, and then he was pulled back up, foot by foot. The whole length of the rope couldn’t have been more than forty feet, but the trip up seemed endless.
They pulled him back up through the clouds, and hauled him out of the floor of the chamber. Hawk scrambled away from the open space, and Fisher held him while he waited for his head to stop spinning and his stomach to settle. Everyone was very patient, which was just as well, as Hawk was in no mood for nonsense. He’d never liked heights. Finally he pulled vaguely at his clothes, tugging them back into place again, and glared at Lament.
“Well, there’s definitely a building down there. And a bloody big one, too. Marble walls. Some kind of decorations. Place stinks, though. Probably because it’s been deserted for so long.”
“No sign of any occupants?” asked Lament.
“Look, I was upside down and fighting not to puke,” said Hawk. “There could have been an orgy going on down there and I wouldn’t have noticed. Still, if there was anyone there, I think they would have made some sort of comment at me bursting up out of their floor and hurtling toward their ceiling, and I didn’t hear a damn thing. I’m assuming there was a ceiling somewhere, but I never even got close to it. This Cathedral has got to be one hell of a size. Big as a mountain. Bigger.”
“Perhaps it’s been growing, deep in the earth,” said Lament. He didn’t sound like he was joking.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Fisher. “Lower everyone through on a rope? Then who gets to stay behind?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said the Seneschal, scowling thoughtfully. “If you remember, I encountered something like this before, on my journey to rediscover the lost South Wing of Forest Castle. I found a doorway leading into a Tower that was upside down to its surrounding structure. When I passed through, I became upside down, too—or rather, the right way up as far as the Tower was concerned. The magic here feels very similar to what I encountered then.”
“Then why didn’t I turn right way up?” Hawk asked.
“Because you were still physically connected to this room by the rope.”
“Hold everything,” said Fisher, just a little ominously. “Are you seriously suggesting we all just jump into the clouds feet first, and trust that everything will turn out all right?”
“Well, basically, yes,” admitted the Seneschal.
“You first,” said Fisher. “And we’ll all listen for a scream.”
“I’ll go first,” said Lament. “You just have to have faith.”
And as easily as that he stepped off the edge of the square, and dropped into the roiling clouds. Everyone listened intently, but there was no scream. A few moments later, Lament’s voice came back to them from surprisingly close at hand.
“Come on in. The Cathedral’s very interesting.”
The Seneschal jumped in immediately, and disappeared into the clouds. Fisher took Hawk’s hand in a firm grip, and they jumped in together.
They burst through the cloud cover, somersaulted disconcertingly fast in midair, and the next thing they knew they were standing on a bare marble floor at the foot of an immensely tall gallery. There was no trace in the floor of the gap they’d just jumped through. That worried Hawk and Fisher for a moment, but they were quickly distracted by the sheer scale of the Cathedral around them. They’d appeared in the central gallery, a huge open space bounded by sheer white marble walls that shot up for hundreds of feet before finally disappearing into a vague blue beyond the human eye’s reach. The gallery would have seemed serene, even spiritual, if it hadn’t been for the thick rivulets of dark red blood that ran endlessly down the marble walls. The blood collected in great pools on the gallery floor, creeping slowly around the rows of dark oaken pews.
The whole place stank like a slaughterhouse.
“Where the hell is all that blood coming from?” Fisher asked quietly.
“Just as much to the point,” said Hawk, just as quietly, “who or what is it coming from?”
The whole floor was awash with blood, but never more than an inch or so deep, despite the never-ending crimson flow down the walls. Fisher stepped gingerly through it to inspect the nearest pew. The solid wood was clean, but the cushions and embroidered knee pads were soaked with blood. A single prayer book sat on a wooden seat, its leather cover dappled with dried blood. Fisher picked it up and opened it at random. The text was handwritten in a clear copperplate and consisted of the phrase We all burn repeated over and over again. Fisher flicked through the pages, but everywhere it was the same. We all burn.
“Blasphemy,” said Lament, and Fisher jumped, startled. She hadn’t heard him come up and look over her shoulder. He reached out for the prayer book, and Fisher was only too happy for him to take it. She rubbed her hands vigorously on her hips, as though they might be contaminated. Lament opened the book, and then made a quick, surprised sound. Fisher looked at the pages open before him. The handwritten text now said Welcome, Jericho Lament. We’ve been waiting for you. Over and over again.
“Interesting,” said Lament, his voice calm and apparently unmoved.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” asked Fisher. “A book that’s been sealed away here for centuries, and it knows your name?”
“Whoever’s responsible for this little parlor trick, they don’t know everything. They don’t know my true name. I only adopted Lament as my name when I became the Walking Man.”
“But Jericho Lament is your true name now,” said a distant, rasping voice. “The old you is dead. You killed him to become what you are. Lament is all you’ll ever be now, Walking Man.”
Everyone looked quickly about them, but there was no one else in the great g
allery. Fisher and Lament moved away from the pew to join the others, leaving the prayer book behind them. Hawk already had his axe in his hand, and he and Fisher stood back to back, ready to take on any threat. The Seneschal was trying to look in every direction at once. Lament leaned on his long staff and frowned thoughtfully.
“It would appear we are not alone here,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Get away,” said the Seneschal. “You do surprise me. Of course we’re not bloody alone! If the Cathedral was uninhabited, we wouldn’t have had to come here! No, there are presences here. I can feel them. Can’t you feel them?”
“A lot of people died here,” said Lament. “A blood sacrifice, perhaps.”
“Then why is the blood still running?” asked Hawk.
“Good question,” said Lament.
He had nothing more to say. Everyone looked back and forth, tensed for an attack that never came. There were wonderful mosaics on every side, carvings and tapestries, all of them beautiful, all of then fouled and disfigured by the running blood. The single pulpit looked like something large had been butchered in it. There were many standing statues in various attitudes of grace. All of them were missing their heads. The air was close and very hot, and everyone was sweating now. There were no windows anywhere, no release from the overpowering coppery stench of freshly spilled blood. Hawk spat several times, but the taste stayed in his mouth. There was a horrid oppressiveness to the place, a pressure on the soul, like a weight too heavy for mortal frames to carry.
“It’s like being back inside the Darkwood,” said Fisher after a while. “It drags at your soul, weighs you down. Till you feel stained, inside and out.”
“Yes,” said Hawk. “I remember.”
“I wasn’t aware you’d passed through the Darkwood,” said Lament.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know everything,” said Hawk. “It was a long time ago. The point is, we can’t stay here too long. Not even you, Walking Man. If this place is some cousin to the Darkwood, it’ll eat our souls. This isn’t the kind of place humans were ever meant to be.”
“Something’s coming!” said the Seneschal. “Something …”
The dead materialized around them, fading into reality like dark shadows staining the air. Rows of men, women, and children, hanging on the air in great circles surrounding them. Dressed all in black, with white faces, their eyes and mouths little more than dark smudges. Blood dripped slowly from their hanging feet. They were utterly, inhumanly still, and waves of pain and loss and horror hit the four living souls from every direction at once. They cried out, even Lament, and then were silenced by the sheer scale of what they were feeling. Unbearable pain, terrible loss, horror beyond imagining. This was nothing like the quiet, ineffectual ghost Hawk and Fisher had found in Haven. These were the spirits of the murdered dead, ripped untimely from their lives, condemned to remain in the place of their death. In the place where all life and love and hope had been cruelly stolen from them. Trapped between this world and the next, in a never-ending moment of despair.
“Dear God,” said Hawk shakily.
“Oh God, oh God,” said the Seneschal. “How many of them are there?”
“Hundreds,” said Lament. “And they’ve been here a long, long time.”
“Poor bastards,” said Fisher. “Poor bastards.”
A ripple moved slowly through the dark crowd, and a silent voice beat in the heads of the living. Free us. Free us.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” demanded the Seneschal of the Walking Man. “You’re supposed to be the Wrath of God, the avenger of wrongs. If anything ever deserved avenging, this is it. There are children here! Do something, damn you!”
“I can’t give life to the dead,” said Lament. “Only one man was ever able to do that, and I am not He. The best I can do is free them from this place and send them to their rest. Vengeance will have to wait till we find their murderer.”
He reached for his holy power, and found it wasn’t there. The power he’d called on so freely in the past, the embodiment of God’s will in the world of men, was no longer his. He called out to the voice within him, and there was no answer.
“Well?” said Hawk. “What are you waiting for?”
“I am much less than I was,” Lament said slowly. “I am the Wrath of God in the world of men, but I don’t think that’s where we are anymore. We’re somewhere else.”
“I always know where I am,” said the Seneschal. “That’s always been my gift, my power. But I don’t anymore. I feel lost. I never felt lost before. Never. How do you people stand it?”
His voice moved rapidly through uncertainty to fear to hysteria, and only stopped when Fisher grabbed him by the arm and gave him a good shake. “Take it easy. You’ll adjust. Concentrate on what’s happening now. I’ve always found the presence of death concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
“Something’s happening with the ghosts,” said Hawk. “They look agitated.”
The dark figures were moving now, gliding sideways in a great circle around the living, circling faster and faster till the individual shapes were lost in a great blur of black and white. Their whispering voices rose again, trying desperately to communicate something important, but all that could be understood were three ominous words: The Transient Beings. Lament sucked in a sharp breath, startled, and the others all turned to look at him.
“That’s a name I wasn’t expecting to hear,” he said. “The Transient Beings are immortal creatures of great power, the physical manifestations of abstract concepts or ideas. They exist outside of time and space until some fool summons them into the walking world. Never born, they cannot die. Ideas distilled into mortal form, they can never be destroyed, only banished. The Demon Prince was a Transient Being. He alone nearly destroyed the mortal world. If there’s more than one of his kind in this place, we are all very definitely out of our depth.”
And then the dead screamed shrilly, an awful sound that filled the great gallery and echoed back from its bloodstained marble walls. Their cry faded suddenly away, along with their ghostly forms, and in moments only the echoes of their horror remained to show they had ever been there. And yet there was still a presence in the gallery, so strong, they could all feel it, a sensation of being observed by malignant eyes. Hawk and Fisher were back to back again, their weapons held out before them. Lament glared angrily about him. The Seneschal cocked his head slightly to one side, listening.
“Something else is coming,” he said finally. “Something bad.”
And then there he was, right before them, a man wreathed in flames. Hawk and Fisher fell back a step, driven away by the blazing heat. The Seneschal stood behind Lament, who put his staff between him and the man on fire. The flames rose and fell, but did not consume him. His skin started out a painful red, and then it burned and blackened and split, glowing bloodred in the open cracks, before darkening further like a living cinder, only to crack and fall away, revealing fresh new skin underneath. Over and over again, in an endless agonizing cycle. The crackling flames rose and fell, and his body burned forever. Wreathed in flames, endlessly tormented.
“The Burning Man,” said Jericho Lament softly.
“Welcome to my creation,” said the Burning Man in a dry, rasping voice. Flames danced on his tongue, inside his mouth. “All this is mine. I designed it. And because of it I made all those people die, in pursuit of something greater. Because of me, and what I did, they are captive in this place forever. They come and go as I please. I let them manifest for a time, to talk with you, that you might know of my power.”
“If you’re so powerful,” said Fisher, “why are you on fire?”
“Because I died and was damned,” said the Burning Man. “And then I was summoned up out of Hell to be the guardian of this place. Still burning, for all eternity, inside and out, endlessly consumed and regenerated, wreathed in the flames of the pit, that my punishment should not end just because I am briefly out of Hell.”
“How long have
you been here?” asked Hawk, trying not to turn his head away from the choking stench of roasting flesh.
“Centuries,” said the Burning Man. “Centuries of torment, and never a moment’s ease. You’d think you’d get used to it eventually, but you never do. The pain is as horrible now as it was the first day I was dragged down into the inferno. I can’t even cry. My tears turn to steam.”
“You dare ask for our pity?” questioned Lament. “After admitting you murdered all those poor imprisoned souls? Explain yourself! Who are you? What happened here all those centuries ago?”
“What makes you think I’ll reveal my secrets to you, Walking Man?”
“Because sinners love to boast of their sins. It is all they have in the way of accomplishment or comfort.”
“You think you know so much,” said the Burning Man. “You know nothing. Nothing at all. While I can tell you things that will blast your reason and damn your soul. I am Tomas Chadbourne, architect and creator of this Cathedral. Everything here was born in my mind. I supervised its construction, agonized over every detail, and drove my workforce to distraction because I would accept nothing less than perfection. And there was my first sin. Pride. Because I came to love my Cathedral more than the God it was meant to venerate. I thought myself a man of power and distinction, and I wanted more. Much more. And while studying certain ancient books in search of ways to make my creation even greater, I came across an old, old compact that would transform me and make me as a god. Following its instructions I walked into the Darkwood unafraid, and none of the demons there opposed me. They knew I was expected, invited. In the rotten heart of the Darkwood I found the Demon Prince, sitting on his rotten throne. He told me what I had to do to become as powerful as him, and I did it. But of course, he lied. They all lie, the Transient Beings. Our mayfly lives are nothing to them, save entertainment. They hate humanity for being real.