Beyond the Blue Moon (Forest Kingdom Novels) (51 page)

“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.”

“But if Forest Castle contains the Inverted Cathedral, why does it need a guardian?” the Seneschal asked. “I mean, who’d be crazy enough to come in here if they didn’t have to?”

“Because of the Gateway,” said the Burning Man. “And the power it promises.”

“A Gateway to Hell?” asked Lament.

“No, to somewhere worse. And I’m going to lead you there. All the way to the top of my Cathedral, and deep into the earth. And either you’ll fail and die for my amusement, or you’ll come at last to the Gateway; and I’ll watch as you open it, and go to a place that’s worse than Hell for humans. It’s called Reverie. You can be damned there forever while you’re still alive. You will know pain and horror and despair in a place that has no ending.”

“You do like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Fisher asked.

“Reverie is not a part of the material world,” said Lament, ignoring Fisher as the Burning Man had. “How can this Gateway lead us there?”

“Because of what I did, the Inverted Cathedral is no longer a part of the material world. My blood sacrifice thrust it outside the world of mortal men. Surely you’ve noticed that you’re no longer everything you used to be, Walking Man. You have no authority here.”

“God is everywhere,” said the Walking Man.

The Burning Man shrugged. “The space the Inverted Cathedral now occupies forms a connecting bridge between the world of men and the world of Reverie. An unsuspected back door through which Wild Magic shall come again to rule all that is.”

Lament and the Burning Man then began to argue about this in increasingly technical and abstract terms, and Hawk and Fisher quickly tuned them out. They moved a little way off to talk quietly together. The Seneschal went with them, rather than be left alone.

“How much of this are you buying?” asked Hawk.

“I don’t know,” said Fisher, frowning. “It all ties together, but it’s all based on the word of a confessed murderer.”

“Why would he lie?” the Seneschal asked.

“Why would he tell the truth?” countered Hawk. “He’s got no reason to help us.”

“Maybe he needs us to open this Gateway,” suggested Fisher.

“Could be,” said Hawk. “I think we have to go along with this bastard, for the time being at least, if only in the hope we’ll find some chance to free the spirits trapped in this awful place. The Burning Man deserves to be here. They don’t. I’ll do whatever it takes to set them free.”

“This is a bad place to make promises,” said the Seneschal. “We don’t understand everything that’s going on here.”

“Right,” agreed Fisher. “Let’s just try and make sure we’re not doing someone—or something—else’s dirty work.” She glared about her. “I really don’t like this place. In its own way, it’s darker than the Darkwood ever was.”

“The Burning Man mentioned a sorcerer called the Magus,” said the Seneschal. “You don’t suppose …”

“That was centuries ago,” said Hawk. “How could it be the same man? Even sorcerers don’t live that long. Besides, I’ve seen nothing to indicate the Magus is that powerful.”

The Burning Man spun around suddenly to face them. “The Magus still lives? I should have known he’d still be around. Still working his plots, manipulating everyone to serve his own ends. We have to get moving. Now. Before he comes in here after you.”

“You’re frightened of him,” said Hawk. “Why? You’re dead. What more could he do to you?”

“He could send me back to Hell,” said the Burning Man. “After all, he summoned me up out of there.” He hugged himself with his flame-wrapped arms, as though trying to hold himself together, and then glared angrily at Lament. “Why aren’t there more of you? I was expecting more. Why isn’t the Queen here? This is her Castle, her Kingdom. She has a duty to be here. Or is she too scared?”

Lament smiled for the first time. “If Felicity was here, she’d probably just light a cigarette off you. She doesn’t need to be here, we represent her.”

Fisher chuckled suddenly, and everyone looked at her. She shrugged defensively. “I was just wondering, if we brought the Lady of the Lake in here and put her together with the human candle, would she put him out?”

There was a pause. “Your sense of humor picks the weirdest times to surface, Isobel,” said Hawk.

“The Lady has manifested?” asked the Burning Man. “That’s it. We are moving right now.”

“Hold everything,” said Fisher. “Lament, you’re supposed to be the Wrath of God. Can’t you do anything to help the souls trapped here?”

“I was wondering about that,” said the Seneschal.

“My power here is much diminished,” said Lament. “In this place of lies and deceptions, I can no longer hear the voice of my God. With no divine guidance to lead me, I have only my own wits and experience.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about deceptions, Lament,” said the Burning Man. “You’ve been lying to yourself for years. There never was any voice of God within you. All you ever heard was your own voice, the part of you where your magic comes from. Your magic, your power—not God’s. Never God’s. All you are, and all you ever were, is a sorcerer with delusions of grandeur. There is no God, Lament. Do you think your good God would allow a torture chamber like Hell to exist? There is only the dark, and what waits there. The light is just a passing thing.”

“Liar,” said Lament. “Hell is built on lies, and you are a part of Hell. Everything you say is suspect.”

“Why lie, when the truth can be so much more harmful?” questioned the Burning Man.

He laughed at Lament, and the Walking Man struck at him with his silver-tipped staff. He put all his strength behind it, but at the last moment the staff jerked away, unable to touch the Burning Man. Lament was thrown off balance, and had to step quickly aside to avoid the flames before him. He seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to be invulnerable. He recovered himself quickly and began a service of exorcism in a loud trembling voice, until the Burning Man’s rising laughter drowned him out. Lament broke off in mid-sentence. He looked lost, and for the first time confused and uncertain. And perhaps a little afraid.

“I am here because it is willed for me to be here—by a power far greater than yours, sorcerer,” said the Burning Man, grinning. “Your whole life has been a lie, Lament. All you are is a magic-user whose powers remained latent until late in life, when they were finally activated by the trauma of seeing your fellow monks die in the long night. You were afraid of your long-suppressed magic, so you found someone else to blame it on. Everything you’ve done is the result of religious mania focused through your own sorcery.” The Burning Man laughed again as Lament cried out in wordless rage. “All the terrible things you’ve done, in the Lord’s name! Smiting the sinners with your holy rage! We know all about anger in Hell, Lament. Did no one ever tell you rage is a sin? Even holy rage. And murder is always murder. Every day, Jericho, since you took up your false cause, you damned yourself in your God’s name. They’re going to enjoy you in Hell. There’s a specially hot corner of the Inferno for false prophets.”

“Lies,” muttered Lament. “It can’t be true. It can’t—”

“That’s enough!” Hawk broke in sharply. “Give me one good reason why we should follow you anywhere, murderer. You obviously don’t have our best interests at heart.”

“The answer to all your questions and all your problems lies on the other side of the Gateway,” said the Burning Man. “You risk your lives and your souls, but if by some miracle you can pass through the Gateway and return, you can put right everything that’s wrong in the Forest Kingdom. Everything.”

“How is that possible?” asked Hawk.

“I told you. There’s power there. Power to change everything for the better. Or the worse, if you fail.”

“And you’ll lead us to the Gateway? Even though you were put here to prevent just that?”

“I have been here a very long time,” said the Burning Man. “And the geas that bound me is not as strong as it was. I’ll take you all the way to the very top of my Cathedral, and the Gateway there. All the way up, or all the way down, if you prefer.”

“All the way down,” said Lament quietly, his eyes unfocused. “To see something awful squatting on its terrible throne.”

“Been there, done that,” said Hawk briskly. “The Demon Prince was pretty impressive, but we still kicked his arse. And it’s not a Gateway to Hell, remember? It leads to Reverie. Whatever that might be.”

“Hell, like religion, takes many faces,” said Lament. And then he turned away so they couldn’t see his face.

“Why is it so important that we should go through this Gateway?” the Seneschal asked after a pause.

“There are forces moving now,” answered the Burning Man. “Influences vast and powerful, pressing against the other side of the Gateway. They want to be free, and they think they can use you. And if you fail, I shall at least see you fall and suffer, this side of the Gateway or that.”

“Is that all there is left to you?” asked Fisher, wrinkling her nose. “Spite and vindictiveness?”

“The damned must take their comforts where they can,” said the Burning Man.

“What will happen if we go through this Gateway?” Hawk asked.

The Burning Man shrugged, and his flames jumped and flickered. “Probably you’ll all die. No man or woman has ever returned alive from Reverie. It’s not a place where humans, or even human thought, can survive. Too limited, you see. So, are you ready to die, my brave heroes? Ready to lay down your lives for a chance to save the Forest Kingdom? After the way this Land has treated you all? Can any of you really say the Forest has treated you fairly?”

“I could destroy the Gateway,” said Lament, not turning back. “Seal Reverie off forever from the world of men.”

“No you couldn’t,” the Burning Man told him. “The Gateway is an important part of reality; one of the cogs in the great wheel around which everything turns. If you were even to attempt to destroy it, you risk unraveling everything. No, your only choice is whether to try and enter the Gateway or not. Live or die. Be the heroes you think you are, or abandon the Forest to its fate.”

“I know my duty,” said Hawk. “I’ve always known my duty.”

“Some things you just have to do,” said Fisher.

“That’s what gives life purpose and meaning,” agreed the Seneschal.

The Walking Man turned back to face them all, smiling slightly. “Thank you. For a moment, I forgot myself. All my life, for whatever reason, has been given to protecting the innocent and avenging the injured. Nothing has changed my faith in that. We go on—to the Gateway and beyond.”

“Oh, I’m impressed,” said the Burning Man. “Maybe, just maybe, you’ll prove strong enough to survive the transition through the Gateway. And if you can, you could make a deal with the Beings on the other side. The Transient Beings. If you can find the right price to offer them, they just might re-Invert the Cathedral for you, and free the spirits contained here. There’s a small part of me that would like to see the Transient Beings thwarted in their plans, because one of them betrayed me. But what price could you offer them, greater than the domination of reality itself? They’re very powerful now, grown horribly strong on all the Wild Magic generated by the Rift, and collected and focused down through my Inverted Cathedral. With or without your intervention, I don’t know how much longer the Gateway can hold them back. They hunger to become real. Once they manifest in our world through the Blue Moon, Wild Magic will have dominion over all, and there shall be hell on earth forever.”

“They sent the killing shadows into the Court, didn’t they?” asked the Seneschal. “The ones the young witch stopped.”

“A test of their power,” said the Burning Man. “A taste of things to come.”

“Everywhere we turn, I see the Magus’ hand,” said the Seneschal. “I never trusted him. He created the Rift and did nothing to stop the invading shadows. And now the Burning Man knows his name. Could the Magus be behind everything that’s happened, from the Inverting of the Cathedral right up to the Kingdom’s present troubles? And if so, dare we leave him unopposed in the castle in our absence?”

“I don’t see we have much choice,” said Hawk. “The Gateway must come first. If we survive that, maybe we can make him shut down the Rift, and put a stop to the building Wild Magic.”

“That’s a big if and maybe,” said Fisher.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lament. “We have to go to the Gateway. Everything we ever believed in depends upon that.”

“We’re all going to die,” said the Seneschal. “I just know it.”