"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 neatest 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 Cocked 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 gallery. 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 be 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 I 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 blood-stained 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.
"The price of power was surprisingly simple. A mass sacrifice. My Cathedral was finally completed, and so I called its first congregation to attend. I promised them a special ceremony they would never forget. They all came, those who had worked so hard and so long to build this Cathedral, and brought their families. They sang hymns and praised the Lord I no longer believed in, and all the while I stood within a disguised pentacle and said the words I'd been taught. And in a moment every man, woman, and child turned upon each other in a terrible mad fury, and tore each other to pieces. Fathers and mothers murdered their children and then slaughtered each other. It was a most marvelous, if bloody, spectacle, and I laughed and laughed and laughed. They're still here, of course, the poor murderers and their victims, bound together by horror and loss and dreadful crimes unwillingly committed. Contained here for all eternity by the spell their deaths powered.
"The whole Cathedral shook as the sounds of murder and dying built into a howl of outrage that resonated through the whole structure, amplified and concentrated according to my design. And in a moment that never really ended, a building that once rose up toward the heavens was instantly Inverted, and plunged down toward the pit. Space itself was corrupted at my command. Something that should have been God's, a joy and a wonder in the world of men, had been given into the hands of the enemy."
"You bastard," said Hawk.
"What?"
"You heard me," said Hawk. "Did you think we'd be impressed by your story? Even scared? We've seen worse than you in our time, little man. All you've done is sicken me to my stomach. All those people sacrificed for your ambition. Still here, in this awful place, because of what you did. I saw children among the dead. Children, you bloody bastard! I won't stand for that. Whatever it costs, I'll tear you down and see those poor souls set free. You hear me, Burning Man? Whatever it costs!"
"What will you do?" asked the Burning Man. "Kill me? I died long ago, Captain Hawk. I have been sentenced by the judges of Hell, and my torment is already worse than anything you could ever do to me. The spirits of the dead are trapped here forever, by my will, and there's nothing you or any other living soul can do about it."
Hawk lifted his axe and started forward. Fisher grabbed him quickly by the arm and stopped him. "No, Hawk! That's not the answer. Even the High Warlock's axe couldn't hurt something like him. We have to wait, and hope for a better chance."
"She's right," said Lament. "Contain your anger, Captain. He seeks to provoke you. Continue your story, murderer."
"It all went wrong," said the Burning Man. "Such massive necromantic force generated by such a monstrous blood sacrifice should have made me a power and a domination in the earth. I had such wonders and horrors planned. I would have been the f
ather of a whole new monstrous age. But I was only safe from the effects of my spell while I remained inside the pentacle. When the Cathedral was Inverted, so was I, and I found myself outside the pentacle. Such a stupid mistake. I was torn apart by the victims of my own spell. I died, and damned myself to Hell, for nothing. For being stupid. The Demon Prince could have warned me, but of course he didn't. He must have laughed for years at the thought of my burning in the inferno because of him."
"What's Hell like?" Fisher asked.
"Knowledge of your own guilt forever," said the Burning Man. "I'm not allowed to say any more. Except… even after all that's been done to me, for all my never-ending torment, I still won't repent. I'm still proud of what I did and what I almost achieved. And I still have hopes. That's why the four of you are here now. You're part of a plan you don't understand, a plan formed in the vast intellects of beings older than mankind. To throw down the restraining laws of order, reshape reality, and bring about hell on earth."
"What makes you think we'd do anything to help scum like you?" asked Hawk, still gripping his axe tightly.
"Don't be so high and mighty, Captain Hawk. Hell waits for you, and your woman, too. I can always smell another killer." He turned to Lament and smiled broadly, his blackened lips splitting apart. "Murder has a savour all its own, doesn't it, Walking Man?"
"You haven't finished your story," said Lament, his voice flat and unaffected. "Why are you here and not in Hell, where you belong?"
The Burning Man shrugged, and flames danced on his shoulders. "The first Forest King tried to reclaim the Cathedral by calling on many a powerful sorcerer, but what I had done could not be so easily undone. And so the King had a great Castle built upon and around the site of the Inverted Cathedral, to contain it. And then the King had his most powerful sorcerer, an enigmatic personage called the Magus, summon me up out of Hell to be the guardian of this place, bound by Wild Magic to prevent anyone or anything from getting in or out. The final irony. The architect of all this, trapped as a slave inside his own creation. So I now burn here instead of in Hell. It hurts just as much."