Hellbound Hearts (21 page)

The Emperor sighed. “I need time to study it.”

“Of course.” The Demon smiled. “Your jester speaks the truth. You must read the contract and unravel the complexity of its language. Then, when you have the document all figured out—if you have the wit to do so—sign it.”

The Emperor frowned. “How will you deliver the money?”

“There's no gold involved.”

“What?”

“Sign. And the invaders will go.”

“How will they be compelled?”

“My Cenobite masters have their ways,” chuckled the Demon.

“Read the contract, then sign! Once I have delivered the document, bearing your signature, to them they will grant me the power to help you.”

The Clown opened his mouth to add a vulgar comment.

“Sign in the fool's blood.” The Demon toyed with the heartchain. “Oh . . . by the by, you will have a special coin struck to commemorate the breaking of the siege. When you do, add this chain to the coin's alloy. Let us agree that it will symbolically seal our deal.”

Understandably aghast at being used as an inkpot, the Clown scrambled under the Emperor's cloak to hide. The Lord of Quarters enjoyed his fear. “Skewer the infuriating little piglet. Dip your pen in his vein. Sign the contract. Then pull the chain from my heart.”

The Slave had been watching events closely. It had been disturbingly easy to picture the Demon becoming lord of a quarter of the Byzantine Empire. True, the Slave knew nothing of these Cenobites, but it wasn't difficult to imagine the Demon's masters. Surely the Cenobites would be as malevolent as this creature with its scalelike adornment of coins. Yet they needed the Emperor's signature on the contract before they could act. Until then, they wielded no power over him or his people. Then, in his mind's eye, he saw the heartchain being dropped into a pot of molten bronze that would become newly minted coins. The bronze solidus would quickly be in circulation. Virtually everyone would carry such a coin. In exchange for goods and services, it would transit through bakery, tavern, brothel, church, and tax office alike. And in that coin would be a trace of the Demon's heart-chain. It would spread through the Empire, just as plague spreads through a population. The Slave recalled the corpses filled with live rats that were catapulted into the city. Wasn't there a similarity? The rats were tiny, yet the disease they spread wreaked huge damage. Might not the Lord of Quarters be infecting the monetary system of Christendom in much the same way as the Ottomans attempted to infect the populace?

Guards bellowed curses as they endeavored to drag the Clown from the Emperor's purple robes. The Clown begged his master to save him. Meanwhile, the Emperor wiped away a tear. He was sorry
to do this, so very sorry, but sacrifices must be made in order to restore Constantinople to its former glory.

When the Emperor had second thoughts regarding his beloved Clown, the Demon spoke confidentially. “You know those keys? The ones on the fool's staff? Well, they open the doors to your concubines' rooms. Need I say more?” The Lord of Quarters chuckled. The heart-chain quivered to the quick rhythm of his amusement.

Clearly, it would be calamitous if the Demon's chain came to be smelted with the alloy for the coin. Just what kind of disaster, the Slave didn't know, but it would be grave. Instinct told him that, for sure. Just as instinct told him this procurer for the Cenobites had been waiting entombed for centuries. There he'd bided his time for such an opportunity as this. Yet what could the youth do? The Emperor wouldn't listen to advice offered by a slave.

The guards had the Clown by the ankles. They tugged. However, for the sheer love of life, he hung on to the imperial robe. The courtiers clamored, either overcome by the turn of events or shouting advice to the guards.

Now!

The Slave darted forward. He gripped the heart-chain in both hands.

“Not you!” the Demon howled. “It's not supposed to be you!”

The Chamberlain shouted, “Stop him!”

The Slave heaved at the chain. He saw the heart pulled forward through the ribs. It peaked into a cone, such as when a thorn is drawn from skin. Another heave—the heart-chain plopped out with a squirt of dark ichors.

The guards would have easily caught the Slave. However, the Clown's frantic struggles resulted in a maelstrom of people trying to part jester from Emperor. Men stumbled over one another; feet caught in cloaks; soldiers tripped.

So the Slave ran free. In his hands, the heart-chain. The bodyguard pursued him. There was one, however, who moved faster. The Demon had snapped the leather restraints.

“Give it back!”
The hurricane force of his shout extinguished the
oil lamps. Yet in the gloom of the church, his demonic form glowed bright as a hell-given flame.

The Slave fled. Never before had he run so fast. His path took him across the deserted square outside St. Sophia. Above him, stars shone hard on the woes of humanity. He leapt over the headless corpse that had spawned rats. Then he ducked into an alleyway. Here, sheets billowed: death shrouds in the darkness. They were ready if once-mighty Constantinople should fall. Though who would bury its dead, let alone grieve?

Boulders from siege engines rendered houses to dust. But worse, far worse than the thunder of rocks tumbling from the sky . . .
the Demon wants me
. The Devil ran through those death shrouds. One flapped around his face, white cotton pulling tight, then the Lord of Quarters's visage burned its impression into the fabric, leaving a permanent shadow.

The Slave raced on through the labyrinth toward the city's fortress walls. Their alternating lines of cream and red masonry resembled layers of fat and bloody meat piled high on a butcher's slab. Atop the wall, the city's defenders at last deployed their creaking, worn-out, dilapidated engines of war. With a
whip-crack
the catapults hurled missiles at the Sultan's warships, where they were tightly packed in the narrow straits of the Hellespont.

“My chain! Give it back!” The Demon ran so fast he blundered against buildings. Then the coins embedded in his skin would spew torrents of sparks. At that instant, the Slave could have believed he was being pursued by a fiery comet.

Panting, the young man scrambled up the steps to the battlements. Starlight revealed the enemy fleet; soon they'd land troops where defenses were at their weakest. The heart-chain clinked in his fingers. At times it was cold; other times it was hot as entrails plucked from a pig's belly. Just its touch conjured images of the Lord of Quarters coercing many a king or pharaoh of a doomed realm into signing his pernicious contract. And perhaps his achievements would eventually earn him promotion to the rank of Cenobite.

Ahead, on top of the ramparts, Byzantine soldiers loaded throwing
pouches with amphorae containing volatile oils. These they ignited before launch. The Slave watched the weapon, known as Greek Fire, arc through the sky; a blazing trail that fell onto ships; inferno upon inferno blossomed; they introduced to the invaders a searing portion of Hell on Earth. Screams of agony shimmered over the face of the water.

When the Slave reached one such catapult, ready for launch, he stopped dead. There he waited for the Lord of Quarters. The Devil roared down at him, a snarling, spitting cauldron of rage. When he clashed his jaws together, blue sparks jetted from his lips. The soldiers that manned the catapult fled in terror.

“I'll take back the chain. Then I will destroy you.”

“Go on, do it!” The Slave gripped that rat's tail of a chain. “Lord of Quarters? You won't capture even a thousandth of my soul.”

“Oh, a believer?” The creature grinned. “How cute. How naive.”

“Give up, Demon. You've lost.”

“Oh?”

“See the invasion fleet? It's burning. The Ottoman attack has failed. The Emperor won't sign your contract.”

“True. But will that save your bonny hide from my attentions?” The Demon advanced. “Do tell me how?”

“It won't. I accept this is my final hour.”

“Good boy. Clever boy. Now give me the chain.”

The Slave didn't flinch. “You'll have to take it back.”

“Oh, you want to play, do you?” The gold coins in the monster's eyes flashed. “Why not? You do realize, though, this empire is moribund. Its currency is worthless. Smell the decay. Even the palace timbers are rotting.”

“Constantinople isn't dead yet.”

“Soon though, very soon. So why martyr yourself for a city that isn't worth dying for?”

“If, by thwarting you, I've given my family a few more decades, then I'm content. My sacrifice will have been worthwhile.”

“Ah, noble, altruistic fool. And I thought the Clown was the one with the jingling stick. Not the man standing right—no!”

The Slave thrust the heart-chain through his own lips into his mouth. He didn't stop there with its metal resting on his tongue. Steeling himself, he forced the chain into his throat with his middle finger. He felt each sharp link scrape down through his gullet. Through his chest. Into his abdomen. There it glided through the snug configuration of pathways that was his gut. One second the links burned hotly, the next they were cold as a corpse inside of him.

The Demon tut-tutted. “As if that will save you.” The creature flew at the Slave. But didn't attack. Instead, his body became elongated—as slender as that of an eel. It dived headfirst into his mouth.

Gagging at the force of that powerful shape driving through his gullet in pursuit of the chain, the Slave stumbled backward, a plan crystallizing in his mind. When his body slammed into the catapult, he clambered into the throwing pouch that would normally hurl the Greek Fire. He gasped with pain. The Demon's body coins rasped the delicate linings of his intestines. Cries spurted from his lips as his gut distended. Inside him, a sensation of most horrendous pressure as the Lord of Quarters swam downward, as a pearl diver plunges down through the ocean in search of treasure.

The Slave flung himself half out of the pouch so he could punch the lever of the catapult.

A moment later, the boy was no longer of this Earth. The huge timber arm of the weapon flung him out across the Hellespont. That throw's brutal fury snapped his spinal cord. All pain left him as the Lord of Quarters clawed and chewed and raged through his inner workings. Soon the heart-chain would be in the Devil's hands. Not that it mattered anymore.

The Slave realized that the Demon's power was limited by the rules of this infernal game: rules that he and his Cenobite overlords must obey. And those rules dictated that the Demon must persuade the Emperor to sign the contract of his own free will. No doubt the monster could fly back to the church in moments; however, by then the Emperor would have gleaned that the Sultan's battle fleet was ablaze. Consequently, nothing would persuade him to sign away a
quarter of his empire in the full knowledge that Constantinople had halted the invasion. The Demon would be compelled to travel the world in search of another victim.

Calm now. Detached from the sufferings of this world, the young man glided with dreamlike serenity through the night sky. Below him, burning ships. Above him, eternal constellations; the radiant adornment of Heaven. He knew this flight would soon end with lethal finality. And he knew the monster inside of him could not die. Moreover, Byzantium would linger for only a few more years. That didn't trouble him. He'd given his own brothers and sisters a chance of survival. With his life, he'd bought them time. Furthermore, his sacrifice had frustrated the Demon's plan to contaminate Byzantium's currency with the heart-chain. That's what mattered. Unlike his body, his contentment was indestructible; his death, merely the bridge between worlds.

Receding, the lights of Constantinople grew dim. Its churches and towers drowned in shadow. He knew the time had come to gaze on Byzantium no more. The boy closed his eyes and was gone.

by neil GAIMAN and dave McKean

Wordsworth by neil GAiMAN and dave McKEAN

“Words are but pictures, true or false designed, To draw the lines and features of the mind.”

BUTLER - Upon the Abuse of Human Learning.

Examine please the writhing tapestries of choice violence implicit in every scratching and syllable. Smell the beast-blood trickling into each wound, spelling out new ways to violate sweet innocence.

Hooks rend. New blasphemies configurate upon the inside of my eyelids: tales worked in blood and bone and flesh and semen, traced in spittle; a dash of bile here, a slice of kidney there.

Gather round damned children, and together we shall lament and celebrate the configuration that made us what we are, today and forever.

So: do your writhe and shiver in the pangs of darling agonies undreamable, wriggling and gasping and giggling, anticipating the tumescent thrill of another's damnation?

Good
Then I'll begin…