Heart and Soul (37 page)

Third Lady looked into his eyes, which were full of grave reflection, visible even in their dim space, and nodded in turn. She was starting to think that though she would not have wished this adventure upon them and very much would have preferred if Wen could have got his throne with no fight and no problems, this was forging Wen into a better leader than he would have been without it.

When Wen started to run, she could do nothing but follow, and the tunnel opened into a vast, cavernous hall, fully as big as the cavern they’d left behind. Here, the cavern was darker—as though the walls themselves were carved out of coal and absorbed all light.

In the midst of it was an unimaginably large pool of reeking blackness. It looked, to Third Lady’s eyes, larger than Poyang Lake, which she’d been privileged to see in her travels with her singsong troupe.

The smell was choking, revolting—as though someone had taken all the filth of a hundred farmyards and upon it poured the pestilences of a thousand open graves then topped it all with a million sewers. She noted that Wen, too, had stopped, struggling for breath.

In the pool, there were splashes and screams, and she could see various human forms bobbing up and down while other things—definitely not human—pushed them down again and again and again.

There was a narrow path around the pool, though it glistened, as though covered in filth that had iced over. And, past the pool, she could barely distinguish what looked like a cavern full of stalactites, which she guessed was the Court of Ice.

“Milord,” she said, softly, “I think that is the Court of Ice.”

“And this is the Pool of Filth,” Wen said, wheezing a little at the nauseating smell. And then he started walking the narrow path, carefully, because it was indeed quite slippery. Third Lady’s straw-soled shoes had a harder time gripping the path than Wen’s more substantial leather-soled boots. She was glad of his hand holding her, and of the sudden, careful touch with which he kept her upright.

They were maneuvering thus, carefully, when a scream broke out from amid the Pool of Filth. At least it would be a scream were it not for the fact that it was uttered in something that was not a human voice, something that sounded like an inharmonic grinding of glass upon glass and stone upon stone. However, even so, it was impossible not to understand what it was saying.
“Living. Catch them.”

Third Lady shrieked and tried to run, but slipped and would have plunged in the cauldron of filth had Wen not grasped her about the waist, thrown her over his shoulder and run with her.

“You cannot carry me,” she said.

“I am carrying you,” he said, not even having the decency of sounding breathless, as he ran full tilt around the Pool of Filth and into the Court of Ice.

Here, demons—for nothing else could have such bewildering forms—were dipping human souls in water, then hanging them, frozen, from the ceiling. They were multitentacled creatures, with too many heads and eyes. And, in fact, even if Third Lady had time as her husband carried her at a mad clip through the icy landscape, she would not have wished to look too closely at any of them. And yet, the impression she retained, as Wen dodged and careened between them and the icicles, always managing to recover from slips before he fell, was that these creatures were, in fact, careful functionaries, determinedly creating their ice sculptures.

That they did not stir to follow Precious Lotus and Wen—nothing beyond looking up from their work with frowns on their revolting many faces—seemed to bespeak this. Not that it made any difference, because by now Wen and Precious Lotus were being followed by several creatures from the Pool of Filth—giant, sluglike or octopuslike beings, whose appearance was not improved by human faces placed in the most ill-chosen junctures of body and tentacle—as well as by the paper guards who had at last caught up.

Since Wen was holding her facing backwards, Third Lady had a full and glorious view of these monsters, as well as the smell of the creatures, and full enjoyment of their sounds, which were much like the boiling of a stew pot.

“Milord, I don’t mean to rush you,” she said. “But you must, with all possible speed, find the way to the next court.”

“I have found it,” Wen said, and as he spoke, he plunged them into another dark and narrow tunnel.

Concerned for her husband, though his breathing didn’t sound any faster, and if he still wheezed, it was doubtless the reaction of his living lungs—back in the cave—to the fumes of the Pool of Filth, Third Lady said, “Put me down, milord, so I may run as well. You do not wish to tire yourself out. We have three more courts to go.”

He set her down, but grasped her hand tightly once more, and gave her a second to get used to the feeling of her feet beneath her, before he started running again, pulling her behind.

In the next cavern, just as large as the previous, there were people hanging upside down from black ropes tied around their ankles, while many intent demons—seeming as artistic as the ones in the frozen court—carefully and slowly multilated their bodies. At the far end, a giant brazier glowed, where people were being roasted by demons, some of them—Third Lady noticed disquietingly—wearing cook’s attire.

“Black Rope Court and the Grill,” she shouted, because Wen had stopped for a moment. “Run, milord.”

He ran, but staggering, and she had to pass him, still holding his hand, and pull him along to a greater speed, amid artistic devils skinning humans.

“The Black Rope Court,” he said, in a tone as if he spoke out of his dreams, “is how drug addicts are punished.”

“You will not be a drug addict, milord,” she said, sternly, “after we leave here. And besides, remember, souls determine their own punishments in the hall of mirrors. And you’re not guilty.” But, realizing that this place brought on his worst fears, she held his hand tighter and pulled him faster. Behind her, she could hear the glop of the creatures from the Pool of Filth and the rustling of the paper soldiers, who must have recovered from the twisting given them by the monkey. For some reason, they always seemed to take longer to cross the tunnels than Wen and Third Lady did. Perhaps they, too, couldn’t see the tunnels, just like the dead souls couldn’t, and had to find them by hurling themselves in the approximate direction in which Third Lady and Wen had disappeared and hope there was a tunnel there. Third Lady was grateful for this. They needed all the advantages they could get to arrive at the sixth court ahead of these creatures.

She noted a tunnel mouth ahead, which the demons just passed by, and she plunged into it, clutching her husband’s hand, and did not stop until they were through it. On the other side was a cavern that looked almost exactly like the Pool of Filth cavern, except that there was no freezing court and the pool in the center reeked of blood.

In it, various demons with mallets and knives dismembered screaming souls. “Counterfeits, cheats, tax evaders and unfilial daughters,” Third Lady said, hearing her own voice come at her, as if from a distance. Behind her came a glop glop, a rustle, and the tinkle of knives, as some demons from the Black Rope Court joined the others.

Wen picked Third Lady up again, and once more cast her over his shoulder as he ran.

They skirted the pool of blood and found the tunnel easily enough, and plunged into it, to emerge on the other side into…

A place unimaginably hot, filled with boiling cauldrons of oil, in which many souls were being lustily fried. Third Lady didn’t remember what this court punished, and there was no point, at any rate, as Wen was carrying her through it too fast to allow her to see. Which given the look of some of the slick, oily demons making sure that every side of the souls were evenly browned, might be a very good thing.

Past the cauldrons was a smaller, quiet area, surrounded by cubbyhole cupboards. In each cubbyhole was a rolled-up scroll. In a large chair sat a creature who looked human, except that he was much taller and better built than any human she had ever seen, and was wearing splendid robes. Where his face should be, there was only light, as though his face were a paper lantern, blindingly lit from within.

He rose from his seat, and Wen checked his step for a moment, then ran past, as the majestic creature yelled, “Who dares defile the fifth court? Are you in the pay of the Monkey King?”

“Yen-Lo-Wang,” Wen said, almost out of breath. “The god of death.”

“Yes,” Third Lady said. “I remember what the Monkey King did to his filing system in
Journey to the West.
He made all monkeys immortal.”

“At least for a time,” Wen said, and, having found the tunnel, plunged through it, pell-mell.

On the other side there was yet another cavern, this one filled with screaming souls being gnawed by rats and skewered upon various-sized spikes through various parts of their anatomies, all of it kindly watched over by exact and multilimbed demons.

“Liars,” Wen said. “Slanderers, deceivers and gossips.”

“And sexual sins,” Third Lady said. “Which means there must be many a member of the Fox Clan here.”

Groans echoed from several throats at her words, and the torturing demons stopped and looked at them. Which was just as well, since the glop glop, sussurating sound of knives and the voice of a very angry personage had caught up with them.

“I demand to know the meaning of this,” the angry personage said. “You cannot defile Feng Du for no reason at all.”

“It is not for no reason,” Third Lady said, turning around as her husband set her, once more, on her feet. “We are here to see Judge Bao from the Office of Speedy Retribution.”

But as she spoke, the demons from his sixth court surrounded them, too.

They were in a circle of supernatural creatures, and there was no escape.

A DAUGHTER’S PRICE

“You must admit,” Peter told Sofie, “it is a much easier
way to travel, now that I can arrive under my own identity.”

“Indeed,” Sofie said, looking back at him and smiling. They had landed—with him in dragon form, of course—some way from the city last night, after which he had changed into human form again, and dressed, and they’d walked into town, where they’d arrived by the early-morning light. “And it was very good of you to have purchased our own small traveling rug, which we can carry, and therefore answer anyone who asks in what carpetship we arrived.”

“And though they think me eccentric,” Peter said, smiling, “no one can dispute that carpetships can be very disagreeable and are, at the very least, slow.”

“Well, likely they think you can’t afford the ticket on one of the better carpetships,” Sofie said, as they walked between the houses of a working-class neighborhood, looking for the address upon the letter Peter had received.

“Considering the state of our fortune until a few weeks ago,” Peter said, with a grimace, “it is a reasonable assumption. And most people don’t know exactly how many improvements I’m making on the estate.”

“It is a good thing the estate is so isolated,” she said. “Though I don’t think you can keep the secret once Summercourt becomes one of the showcases of England.”

“Likely not,” he said, amused. “But fortunately, my father left things in such a state that it will take many, many years before we are so pleasantly situated. And by then we can easily lie and say we were very lucky with some investments in the exchange.” He paused for a moment before a two-floor, whitewashed house. “Ah,” he said. “Here it is. Love’s Folly. What a name for a house.”

“But appropriate, if what you surmised about the owner’s history is true,” Sofie said, as she glanced around, looking for a bell ring. “I am very desirous of sitting down. The only disadvantage of traveling this way is that we must carry our own valises,” she said, as she raised the offending article. “I so badly want to set it down and I do hope they offer us some refreshment.” She smiled, teasing him as no other human being would ever dare do. “Some of us are entirely unreasonable in not wishing to take our refreshment off a passing springbok, you know, let alone not having the means of cooking it on the spot.”