Chapter Four
In the Belly of the Kronosaur
I grabbed my flute from the strap that secured it to my back and then remembered. With my useless flute in one hand and my puny fan in the other hand, I gazed open-mouthed down a throat the length of a turnpike exit.
“Run!” screamed Mab.
Erasmus, who was standing on the broken bow of the gondola, whacking at the sea monster with Durandel, glanced over his shoulder at our trembling little boat in the midst of the algae-covered swamp and called casually, “Run where?”
Then, the gondola rose up into the air and all went dark, except for the gleam of emerald light from the wing-like wisps coming from the shoulders of my gown, and the bright beam issuing from Erasmus’s sword. We tumbled for a time, sliding and falling, as if we were on some amusement-park water slide. I clung to one of the low benches with both arms. Finally, we came to rest, right side up. The gondola undulated beneath us, and a sizzle, like the sound of eggs cooking, came from several directions, along with a disturbing loud squishy noise that sounded like a cross between walking in wet galoshes and being stuck inside of a giant washing machine.
Wherever we were, it was hot and stank of bile and bleach. It stank so badly I could hardly breathe. In the semidarkness, I heard the sound of retching. At least one of my companions lost what little food his stomach held.
“What happened?” I called hesitantly.
“A cavern enclosed around us, I think.” Mab’s voice came from far away. “By Setebos, the air is foul in here!”
There was a whoosh of wind, and a cold gust from some unknown source blew against my face. This cooler air smelled sweeter, like a late winter’s day when the ice was beginning to thaw, but it only lasted a moment before the humid and putrid air overwhelmed it.
“We’ve been swallowed.” Gregor coughed, then choked out stoically. “Apparently, Maugris here was right about monsters wandering down here since time immemorial. We have been swallowed by a kronosaur.”
“A whosawhatzit?” called Mab, trying to shout over the general cacophony, the galoshes-washing machine whooshing.
My head swam, but an examination did not reveal any bumps or sore spots. So, perhaps the disorientation was caused by the shock of having been swallowed by an enormous, ocean-dwelling reptile. In the dark, with nothing else to distract me from the sting of my wounded cheek, I felt as if there were a line of fire across my face.
“Ah, ma’am?” Mab shouted. “The wounded Ketos is in here with us and alive … and I’m still on it! Anybody got a light?”
Beams of brightness streamed through the darkness, illuminating the bits of the inside of the stomach in which we now dwelt. Erasmus held Durandel aloft over his head, its blade gleaming with a holy light. Finally, we could see our surroundings.
The gondola was partially cracked across the middle and flooding quickly. It bumped against a half-digested skull of something large. Above our heads, huge curved bones arched like the ribs of a cathedral ceiling. Farther away, beyond this skeleton of a recent dinner, slumped our sea monster, with Mab still clinging to one of its gill-like neck frills. As the thing stirred and slowly began moving its head, Mab lowered himself down and touched a toe to the liquid beneath him. His shoe hissed and steamed in the pooled digestive acids. Quickly, Mab clambered up toward the top of the sea monster’s head.
Malagigi stood on the cracked gondola gazing in disgust at his broken pole-oar. Then, he opened his other hand. Upon it, the silver star shone brightly. Suddenly hopeful, I took a deep breath, which I immediately regretted. Bile and ammonia raked my lungs, causing me to double over. My innards writhed in disgust.
The starlight revealed giant folds of soft tissue around us, pale and bloodless like the innards of a fish. These flaps of stomach flesh undulated and rubbed against each other, causing the disconcerting squishy sound. They pushed up against our boat and the skeleton and the sea monster on every side, leaving us with very little room to maneuver. In two places, it pulled together to form a pucker. Most likely, one led to the throat and the other to the intestines. There was no indication as to which way might be which.
As the Ketos woke and shifted, it had to shove aside curtains of stomach wall. This angered the sea monster. Roaring, it thrashed its tail and bit at the thick muscular folds of flesh.
“This is not good!” Mab cried, during one of the moments when he reappeared from where he had been being smothered by the folds of stomach lining the sea monster attacked. “If Old Gill-Frill here keeps this up, he’s going to infuriate our host!”
As the blinded sea monster twisted about again, Mab jumped free. He sailed across the intervening space to grab one of the rib bones of the half-digested skeleton. Clambering from rib to rib, he reached the dome of the skull, next to which floated our quickly flooding gondola.
“Phew! Glad to be off of there,” Mab declared as he slid onto the sinking gondola. “Besides, the thing didn’t have any more eyes for me to blind.”
My shoes hissed as the rapidly rising liquid splashed over them. I backed up.
“Let’s kill it before it gets us,” Erasmus gasped as he recovered from a bile-induced coughing bout. He lowered his arm, depriving us of the pillar of holy light that streamed from Durandel, and strode forward, leaping up onto the skull and shimmying across the vertebrae toward the sea monster. “Bad enough to be in one monster’s stomach without having to be eaten by a second one, too.”
“What?” called Gregor, cupping his hand to his ear, straining to hear over the roar.
“I said, ‘Get the bad monster!’” Erasmus shouted back.
Gregor nodded and started forward. I paused to examine the cracked gondola. “This is going to sink into the stomach acid, and we’re going to lose it.” I jumped up onto the skull to stand beside Mab. “Let’s pull it out of the digestive juices.”
Mab, Malagigi, and I hauled the heavy craft up onto the skull of the whatever-it-once-was, while Gregor and Erasmus continued the fight against the sea monster. I had intended to leave the fight to them, but as I leaned over to steady the boat, the sea monster’s long sinuous tail struck me.
I flew backward off the skull and bounced against the folds of the kronosaur’s stomach. The squishy lining molded to my body, engulfing me. I felt as if I was falling into a huge wall of wet, stinking, rubber foam. The spongy surface dripped with juices that burned my wounded cheek and sizzled against my hair and enchanted gown. Soft painful stuff engulfed my face, smothering me.
And, oh, the smell!
My heart beat like it thought it could save me by racing. I flailed, seeking to breathe. My fan was still in my hand. I slid it open but thought better of it; wounding our host might cause worse troubles. Instead, I elbowed the springy stuff, pushing it aside as if I were swimming. Moving thus, I was able to wriggle out from the stomach wall and grab hold of a rib of the skeleton.
My brothers battled the sea monster. Erasmus hacked at its throat with Durandel. Mab had stuck his trusty lead pipe through the wide gill-flaps to the left of the creature’s head and pulled with both hands. Only he had done his work too well. The pipe ripped through the membranes of the frill, so that Mab now dangled dangerously close to the churning stomach acids below. Helpless, he kicked his feet.
Gregor had taken up the gondola’s broken dolfin as a weapon. He was trying to drive it into the creature’s heart; however, each time he thrust it against the monster’s chest, it bounced off.
Staring at this battle, I wet my lips. This proved to be a mistake. The acid that burned my face now blistered my tongue. I wiped my face angrily with my sleeve and peered at the battle more closely, searching for a way to help my brothers. If I could reach the far curve of the rib upon which I stood, the sea monster would be within arm’s reach. Though what I could do once I was there, I did not know.
I jumped onto the floating vertebrae that had once connected the two ivory curves. It wobbled beneath my foot. The silvery shadows my body cast swayed to and fro against the great folds of the stomach. Quickly, I leapt to the far rib, throwing my arms around it and hugging it until my footing became steady. Sliding my fan open again, I hooked an arm around the smooth white bone and leaned out precariously.
With one graceful stroke, I slit the sea monster’s chest. The green scaly hide parted, peeling away from my blade.
“Gregor!” I waved. “Stab him here!”
Gregor lifted the broken bow iron and shoved it into the wound. He was not at a good angle, though, and the makeshift spike did not impale the creature very deeply. Grabbing the rib tightly, I kicked off. Like a child swinging on a tree branch, I whipped my feet through the air and slammed them against the curving top of the dolfin, driving it home into the creature’s heart.
The Ketos thrashed violently. Then, it twitched three times and was still. Wiping the blades of my fan clean against the monster’s scales, I looked around. Mab was nowhere to be seen, though I could hear his voice, swearing. Erasmus’s feet protruded from a fold of stomach wall. Gregor held up the Staff of Darkness and was experimenting to see the effect of the Hellshadow that issued from it upon the stomach of our host. Malagigi sat cross-legged upon the dome of the skull, the silver star resting upon his open palm.
“Olley-olley-Ome-free!” I shouted, grabbing Erasmus’s legs and pulling. “I got it. You can all come out now.”
* * *
“No good.” Erasmus lowered his staff, which vibrated and hummed in his pitted Urim gauntlet. He gagged, covering his tender nose with his free hand. When he recovered and could shout again, he called, “Look at that stomach fold! Instead of withering it, I just made the thing bigger!”
“It’s a dinosaur!” I shouted over the noise of digestion. I rested against one of the ribs, rubbing my damaged lips with an antiseptic wipe Erasmus had given me from his bag. It did not seem to soothe the burning at all. I could not keep from wondering whether Erasmus had intended to aid me when he gave it to me. At least the smell of it helped keep the odor of the digestion going on about me at bay.
“Kronosaurs are not dinosaurs,” Gregor interrupted. His voice came from a pool of shadow issuing from his staff. “They are short-necked plesiosaurs.”
“A plesiosaur, then,” I continued. “These creatures don’t die of old age; they just grow larger. That’s what some reptiles on earth today do, anyhow. They don’t have a natural adult size like mammals; they just keep getting bigger until something kills them—a predator, disease, or lack of food. Down here, without any natural predators, this thing has apparently just kept growing—since the Cretaceous Period!”
“Then my staff is useless,” Erasmus concluded. He came back over to sit close to Gregor and me, so that he could speak without shouting. “It’s cut our way out or die the death of digestion. What are you doing in there, Gregor? The silver star too bright for you?”
“I prefer the mild brimstone scent of the Hellshadow to the stench of vomit and bile,” Gregor replied. The reminder of the smell caused Erasmus to gag again.
“Ugh!” Mab groaned. “This is a bad business!”
“But, of course, now we know firsthand how Jonah felt,” Malagigi offered from where he sat atop the skull, star in hand.
“We can’t afford to stay here three days!” I pounded my hand against the skull, rocking the boat. “Father is going to be killed on Twelfth Night. We had five days left when we set out, and that was at least a day ago, maybe two. Not to mention what could be happening to the rest of our family!”
“We wouldn’t be worried about the rest of the family, if someone hadn’t summoned the Hellwinds.” Erasmus gave me an accusatory stare. “We’d be past the Wall of Flame by now, not sitting in the stinking belly of some prehistoric whale.”
“Enough, Erasmus.” Gregor’s voice called from the ball of darkness. “We have more important things to do than snipe at one another. We must work together to get out of here.”
“What about crawling out the throat or the anus?” Mab asked.
“We could go up the throat—if we knew which way it was and had some method to keep the kronosaur from swallowing us again—but the other way is a no-no.” Erasmus shuddered. “Can you imagine how long the intestines would be in a thing this size? Miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, depending upon how advanced the creature’s innards are. We’d probably founder somewhere and end our days smothered by plesiosaur poop, if the stench didn’t get us first.”
“If I could be killed by stench, I would be dead already,” I murmured.
It seemed a shame that my awful swim through the Swamp of Uncleanness when we first entered Hell had not inured me to unpleasant smells. At the time, I had thought that no odor would ever disturb me again. Apparently, that was not how one’s nose operates.
“Could we cut our way out?” the ball of brimstony Hellshadow asked calmly in Gregor’s voice.
“I doubt it.” Erasmus patted Durandel. “Even if we were capable of physically hacking our way through what is probably at least two dozen feet of meat, bone, and gristle, it’s unlikely we could survive being caught inside the wound-tunnel, once the creature began writhing from the pain. We’d be squashed.”
“Let me get this straight.” Mab scratched his eternal beard stubble and then counted the points on his fingers. “We can’t wither it. We can’t cut our way out. The Staff of Darkness doesn’t do squat down here, except protect us from the stench, assuming we want to trade light and a bad odor for darkness; neither does the Seal of Solomon. And calling the Hellwinds inside this big oaf’s stomach … Bad idea, right?”
“Right.” Erasmus nodded.
“What’s left?” Mab asked.
“Slow death by digestive juices?” Erasmus suggested.
“Can you help us, Mage Monk?” Mab turned to Malagigi.
“Mais non.” The Frenchman shook his head. “I am able to walk through the monster’s flesh, so I could leave, were I willing to abandon the star. But I could not take any of you with me.” He smiled ruefully. “Rather like the old days, when I knew all manner of secret paths but could not walk them unless I went alone.”
“Could you go for help?” Mab asked.
“Go where?” Malagigi gave a very Gallic shrug. “No one out there would be willing to help, even if they could. As for the Brotherhood of Hope, my people won’t be back for days. Hell is hard for us to reach. The masters brought us here and will not come back for us up until we have given what aid we may. Even if they were to come early, what could they do for you? You are not dead.
“It is at moments like these,” the ex-sorcerer Malagigi opined eloquently, spreading his arms, “that I wish I could call up my old friends to help me. But even if they would come, I would not call them here. They were ethereal creatures, all. Elementals. This place would harm them. Merely being in Hell would corrupt the purity of their natures.”
I leaned against the nearest rib and considered our situation. There had to be a way out. I recalled the angel Muriel Sophia, with her warmth and golden light, and how her visit had banished all uncertainties from my heart. She could not have sent us all into Hell just to have it end like this. I could not turn to my Lady for ideas so I glanced around at the great folds of bloodless flesh, searching for inspiration from other less spiritual sources. How huge and intimidating they looked, like great, slimy, smelly curtains. And Erasmus was right. He had made them even larger.
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “How about making the kronosaurus younger?”
“Come again?” asked Erasmus.
“Make it younger! If aging makes it grow, wouldn’t making it younger make it shrink?” I asked. “Either it would throw us up when we became too big for its stomach, or we could cut our way through the narrower side.”
“If you made it small enough, it would break open around us,” Mab offered. “Er … if we didn’t get squished first.”
“You know, Miranda, I think you may have finally had a good idea,” Erasmus said as he tapped his staff. It began to hum and buzz in his gauntlet again and to emit a blue glow. “How amazing! I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”
* * *
Shrinking the kronosaurus small proved a lengthy process. While we waited, we built ourselves a sort of makeshift lean-to to protect us from the churning and stench of the stomach. First, we cut the skull of the mystery beast free from its skeleton, flipped it over so that it formed a giant white cup. Next, we wedged it inside its own curving ribs—the only things down here that were too large to be routinely tossed about by action of the stomach. This, we bound together with rope from Mab’s bag. Then, we placed the cracked gondola inside the upside-down skull, giving us a place to sit. Finally, using pieces of Malagigi’s broken pole as tent poles, we strung Gregor’s enchanted crimson robes over our heads, to protect us from the digestive juices. Like my tea gown, Gregor’s robes had been woven by Logistilla’s magical process and could not be damaged by ordinary means. This was why he still wore them, even though he had not been a cardinal for centuries and preferred to dress in black.
So we all huddled together in our makeshift hideout and waited. Erasmus lay on his stomach beside the gondola, stretched out on the edge of the upturned skull. His arm was extended beyond our small enclosure, so that the tip of his staff pushed against the stomach wall. I was not privy to the secrets of the Staff of Decay, but he seemed to have some directional control over its effect.
Beside him, Gregor was now dressed in the black turtleneck and slacks he had been wearing beneath his robes. Using the Staff of Darkness, he wreathed the outside of our hideout in the thick shadowy stuff that issued from his staff, in the hope that it might protect us from the terrible smell.
I sat next to Mab, who was rereading his notes in the light of the silver star. The star rested on my hand, so long as I concentrated upon it. Malagigi, who was not encumbered by the monster’s flesh, flitted in and out of the kronosaurus, reporting to Erasmus upon his progress.
From time to time, Erasmus would take a break from shrinking the plesiosaur to age the digestive juices that had gathered beneath us. The giant reptile might merely grow larger when withered, but the juices in it stomach could be aged until they were no longer active. With time, new juices gathered, but Erasmus’s actions gave us a bit of leeway. When the smell became overwhelming, Mab would open his mouth and puff, creating a cool fresh breeze and blowing away the putrid odor. This, I now realized, was the source of the fresh air I had momentarily breathed when we first entered the stomach. After a time, the fresh air would leak out, the stench return, and Mab would do it again.
Mab had been hunched over his notes. Now, he glanced at me and chuckled.
“What’s so amusing?” I called. Despite our close quarters, it was still difficult to hear one another, due to the near-deafening whirr and squish of digestion around us.
“Er … nothing, ma’am.” Mab lowered the brim of his hat. “Just that I may have figured out something about all those Post-It notes we found at your brother’s place. Don’t want to say anything yet, though, as I’m still forming my theory.” Returning to his notes, he murmured something to himself. I could not quite make out his words, but it sounded like: “If I’m right, I’m going to owe the Harebrain some kind of apology.”
Closing his notebook about fifteen minutes later, Mab took a length of rope and, exiting our lean-to, began measuring the stomach folds and their shrinkage times, coordinating his findings with Malagigi’s. As his watch was not working, he asked Gregor and me to count seconds, to help him gauge time. After ten minutes, he announced that he thought it would take approximately five hours to shrink the creature sufficiently to allow for our escape.
“Which isn’t so bad,” Mab concluded, “if you consider that the creature has been growing for over a hundred and thirty million years!”
Five hours! Increasingly, I found myself worrying about Father and the rest of the family. Father, at least, was in a prison somewhere, and, while Lilith might be torturing him, she would not kill him until Twelfth Night. So, in an odd sort of way, he was safe.
But Theo? Mephisto? Titus? Logistilla? Cornelius, and Ulysses? Oh, and Caliban? Who knew where the Hellwinds had deposited them. The Hellwinds were designed to bring souls to the part of Hell most appropriate to their sins. If my siblings were dumped headlong in the places designed to torment them for their worst vices, what chance did they have of surviving?
Dread and foreboding gripped my heart, and cold sweat ran down the back of my neck. These sensations grew worse whenever I had to resist my five-hundred-year-old habit of turning to my Lady for solace. My only comfort was the light of the little star. Somehow, seeing its cheerful silvery glow, it was impossible to be entirely glum.
* * *
The waiting dragged on and on. I am not ordinarily claustrophobic, but the narrow confines of the acid-filled stomach began to oppress me. I contemplated the future should we fail to escape this living prison. Many things troubled me: the fate of my family, our unanswered questions, plans that I had not completed. What bothered me most was that Prospero, Inc. would be left with no one at the helm, leaving mankind with less protection than they had received for the last five centuries.
My heart went out to the Aerie Ones we employed and to the billions of human beings who benefited from our services. It seemed unfair that, should I perish here—never returning to ensure that Prospero, Inc. continued to honor its obligations—the spirits would eventually break free of the covenants that enforced the laws upon which modern science depended, and mankind would be plunged into another dark age.
Seemed like a terrible price: I die in the belly of a kronosaur; all mankind suffers.
* * *
Eventually, Gregor suggested we take this opportunity to get some sleep. Since we had just two days ago imbibed our yearly drop of the Water of Life, which rejuvenated our bodies and extended our life, we were at our heartiest. We could do without food or sleep for some time. As we did not know what would come next, however, it seemed wise not to strain our resources. Erasmus had to stay awake to operate his staff, but Malagigi offered to sit with him and let the rest of us, who still lived in flesh, sleep.
Mab, Gregor, and I arranged ourselves about the small vessel as best we could, using the hardwood benches as our pillows. We spent a few hours in fitful sleep, tossing and turning and suffering from nightmares. They were so terrifying that waking up to discover I was merely in the stomach of a kronosaurus in the depths of Hell was a relief. Perhaps Gregor’s dreams were similarly nightmarish, for he also gave up on sleeping and, instead, knelt in prayer. Mab and I continued to wrest what repose we could from the occasion. The hard surface and uncomfortable position conspired to make this difficult, but I eventually drifted off with visions of elf lords dancing in my head.
* * *
I awoke sore and stiff. Mab woke, too, stretching and grumbling. He muttered something about coffee, to which Erasmus replied with a chuckle. “This is Hell, my man. You need to go to Heaven for good coffee.”
We sat in silence for a time, huddled like children at summer camp—assuming that they had pitched their camp inside the world’s largest living laundry machine during the wash cycle.
Gregor, who was watching the process around us intently, asked, “How did this creature come to be so great? It is far greater than the kronosaurus of Earth. They were only forty-five feet long.”
Erasmus glanced back from where he lay stretched out upon his stomach, his staff extended. “Why do we assume that the biggest ones got stuck in tar pits? Those limits we read about—thirty-five feet, fifty-five feet—that’s the length of the largest specimen we’ve found … Who knows how big the ones we didn’t find were? Can you imagine trying to figure out what humans were like by measuring remains discovered in bogs?”
“That’s a mildly disturbing thought,” murmured Gregor. I doubt the others could hear him over the roar of digestion, but he was seated right beside me.
The air had begun to grow blue around Erasmus, as his staff continued to whirl. He quickly thrust his arm away from himself and toward the kronosaurus, but not before he removed at least ten years from himself. He now looked rather young for a professor.
“Oh, I saw ’em,” Mab reported loudly. “The dinosaurs, I mean. They were big! Bigger than your museums account for … but of course, I was a wind at the time, so it’s hard to give exact measurements. Wasn’t really interested in measuring, in fact, until I got this fleshly body.”
“Why are they called kronosaurus?” asked Malagigi. Somehow, his voice always carried, despite the noise. “Is it because they are so old, it is as if they were the masters of time?”
“No. They were named thus after the Greek Titan who ate his own children. I believe the thought was that this reptile had a mouth so big, it could swallow anything,” Gregor explained.
“Even us,” muttered Mab.
“What?” Gregor leaned forward.
“Even us!” Mab shouted.
“Ah.” Gregor nodded.
“How do you know so much about kronosauruses?” Erasmus called. “An evolution scoffer like you?”
“Ulysses was an admirer of dinosaurs. He took me to see a kronosaurus skull once, back in 1897,” Gregor shouted back, a difficult thing for a man who spoke in a hoarse, raspy voice. “A man had done a painting of what he thought the living creature might have looked like. Not a bad likeness, though he got the shape of the brow ridge wrong.”
I said, “But I thought you didn’t believe in evolution.”
“I don’t,” Gregor replied. “I believed dinosaur bones were a trap to lead men away from the faith, a tool of the devil. Clearly, I was right. The presence of this creature proves my point. Dinosaurs and their relatives come from Hell.”
“That does not necessarily follow—” I began, but Mab interrupted me.
“There was an age when dinosaurs roamed the earth, all right, if that’s what you are arguing about,” he assured us. “Big massive slowpokes that used to stomp around. You had to really get up speed to blow them over, but once you got one of those big ones down, they’d roll around for hours, days sometimes, making their weird, undulating sound. We used to love to … er, never mind.” Mab trailed off.
Erasmus chuckled. “Who would have imagined it? Our Company Detective was a prehistoric cow-tipper!”
“A what?” called Gregor. Malagigi seemed puzzled as well.
“Cow-tipper,” Erasmus called back. “As in, tipping cows?”
“Dripping trout?” shouted Gregor.
“Oh, never mind!”
A look of incredulity came over Erasmus. Adjusting his staff, he brought it close to his face, aging himself until he looked like a distinguished professor again. Grinning, he pushed several times upon his nose, which had healed during the aging process. He put his staff back to work, murmuring softly, “Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”
“But what is the kronosaur doing here?” I called. “It’s too old to be something drawn out of the nightmares of the damned.” I turned to Malagigi. “Did you say it came here from Earth?”
Malagigi nodded. “It must have swum into the spirit world back in its day, and it is still living here. One swam out a few years back. Not a kronosaur but a similar creature with a thinner neck. Some mortal magician ripped an opening in the spirit world and one of the ancient beasts escaped.”
“Yes, I know who you mean,” I said. “That fellow Theo hated so much, the black sorcerer who lived beside a Scottish loch. That particular plesiosaur works for Mephisto now. He’s got it on his staff. He calls it Nessie.”
“What do they do down here?” Erasmus mused. “What do they eat?”
“Other monsters.” Malagigi shrugged. “Each other. People like you.”
“Can’t be too many of those,” Erasmus replied. “Not really the thing, you know, coming bodily into Hell. As a rule, tourist agencies warn against such excursions.”
I started to comment on Ferdinand’s period of bodily incarceration in Hell but then recalled that had been a hoax. Luckily, I remembered before I spoke. Otherwise, I might have discovered firsthand whether or not it was possible to die of embarrassment.
Malagigi stuck his hands in his voluminous sleeves, reminding me of dozens of monks I had known in my youth. “As to why the creature is here, I know not. Perhaps it has become part of the punishments inflicted here, or it may not even be aware that Hell had grown up where its old stomping grounds used to be.”
That was an eerie thought! I straightened up. “What was Hell? I mean, before there were men to punish?”
“A jail for fallen angels until Judgment Day,” Gregor replied gruffly.
“But what about this swamp?” I continued. “Was this particular area used to imprison fallen angels? Did it exist previously, and the Seven who rule Hell just built over it? I thought Mephisto said human passions brought this swamp into being?”
“Je ne sais pas.” Malagigi shrugged. “When I next see my master in the Brotherhood of Hope, I will ask him. He has a master of his own, who lives near the top of Mount Purgatory. From time to time, that master is able to question the saints.”
“The Church may be wrong about dinosaurs,” Erasmus called casually, his dark eyes watching Gregor avidly from beneath his lank hair. “The pope admitted the existence of evolution recently.”
“What? Blasphemy!” Gregor cried. Then, his brow furrowed. “So, Teilhard de Chardinon won our bet, did he? I owe him a drink … only he’s probably dead now, isn’t he? How sad.”
“The Church was wrong about harrowers, too,” I said. “Apparently, eternal torment is not eternal.”
“I knew the Church was wrong on a great many points, but you think they would have gotten that right,” Erasmus murmured.
“For any who do not repent, it is eternal. For them, the flames will burn eternally, or the swamp will stink.” Malagigi pinched his nostrils shut with his hand. “But would God be just or good if he did not hear men’s prayers, even when uttered in the bowels of Hell? Remember, the Bible promises us, ‘If I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there.’”
“So all this time, the Church has been scaring our socks off with tales of Hell, and they haven’t been true?” Erasmus turned to Gregor and shouted over the digestive roar, “When you were pope, brother, did you ever hear tell of such a thing?”
Gregor nodded. “We knew.”
Erasmus shot up into a sitting position and stared at Gregor, his whirling staff ignored in his hand. His head brushed against the crimson roof. “Come again?”
“We knew.” Gregor assumed his grave and ponderous churchman aspect. “It is recorded in a document called the Apocalypse of Peter.”
“Apocalypse of …” called Mab. “What’s that—the End of Pete?”
“Apocalypse means ‘revelation,’” Gregor explained hoarsely. “In this case, a revelation supposedly witnessed by Simon Bar Jonah, though no one believes Saint Peter wrote it himself.”
“How come no one has ever heard of this document?” Erasmus asked suspiciously.
“Churchmen have,” Gregor replied gravely. “When the Church Fathers put the Bible together, they debated whether the holy script should end with the Revelations of Saint John or the Apocalypse of Peter. Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who drew up the original list for what books should appear in the Bible, was uncertain about Revelations. He preferred the Apocalypse of Peter, but in the end the Church Fathers chose Saint John’s writings to enter the Scripture.”
“Any idea why?” Mab asked, pen poised.
“Partially for reasons of authenticity and partially because in Saint Peter’s book, Our Lord Jesus tells Saint Peter that at the end of time, if those in Heaven pray for those in Hell, God will let all the sufferers out. But, he asks Saint Peter not to tell anyone.” Gregor raised his voice so we could all hear him over the background noise. “The Church Fathers felt any suggestion of a way out of Hell might encourage men not to take virtue seriously. Besides, as it was Our Lord himself who requested the matter be kept secret, they felt his wishes should be honored.”
“So, they knew that if we should ever find ourselves in Hell for real, we should keep praying? That’s sort of an important point, don’t you think!” Erasmus looked shaken. Then, his expression grew more skeptical. “Are you sure you didn’t just make this up?”
“It’s all true. You can look it up, if you like,” Gregor replied stoically. “Or you could, last time I was out and about. I am assuming that the Orbis Suleimani has not altered the records since. If they had not done so in nineteen hundred years, they are unlikely to have done so while I was imprisoned.”
“The Orbis Suleimani!” Malagigi’s eyes had grown round. “Sacrebleu! They are sorcerer-hunting madmen of the worst sort! Their name alone strikes terror into the hearts of every practitioner of the subtle arts!”
“That is because they defend mankind from the menace of magic.” Erasmus leaned forward, grinning wolfishly. “That’s how humans got to be the way they are today, you know … masters of the earth: because of the Orbis Suleimani. Because of us!”
“Enough about the Orbis Suleimani. They give me the creeps,” Mab announced. “Caught a—well, you’d call it a cousin—of mine once, several millennia back, and he’s still in a vial in the Vault under Prospero’s Mansion.” Mab gave me a level look. “If we survive this, ma’am, I think you should give him back to me. Call it ‘hazard pay.’”
“Very well, Mab. If we get out of here alive, you may have him,” I promised firmly, silencing the objections in my brothers’ faces with a stern glance.
The look of astonishment upon Mab’s face, when he heard he had gotten his way, was priceless.
As we crouched together beneath our makeshift tarp, the silvery light of the tiny star illuminating our faces, I thought of my brother Theophrastus who had left the family for decades, allowing himself to suffer and grow old, due to his fear that continued exposure to magic would damn him.
“Does Theo know all this,” I asked, “about there being hope, even in Hell?”
“I do not know.” Gregor’s long hair rippled over his broad shoulders as he shrugged. “Why?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “Someone should tell him.”