Thief Page 9

  Once inside, the cave narrowed, at first becoming only wide enough for a single man walking, and then for one crawling. Light came from the far side of the passage, not a lot but enough to show that there was something at the other end. Suddenly and with perfect grace the man dropped to his hands and knees, a movement so natural he could have been born to move on all fours.

  He travelled through the narrow passage to the other side, which Mikel saw opened into a series of chambers ending in a huge cavern. A massive internal room, large enough to have seated a concert audience. There were torches aflame, dotted all around the walls, their light shone on the stone behind, and cast eerie shadows around the cavern. Stalagmites covered the floor; strange twisted projections of rock that resembled giant teeth more than natural outgrowths of sediment. The ceiling, however high it might be, was invisible in the dark. Perhaps there was no ceiling, only black starless sky in here.

  But the group in the middle quickly dominated Mikel’s attention. A circle of hooded men, cowls and cloaks obscuring everything about them, waited, three layers deep. In their midst was an alter of stone, an enormous flat slab of rock weighing un-guessable tons. It stood in the middle, pressing down upon the earth that tried to bear it, like a giant hand. A massive force for darkness upon the good earth. Seeing it, Mikel had the instinctive need to curl up into a foetal position. He didn’t know why, but he knew he should.

  On its surface were countless lines, traceries in red of strange hieroglyphics, all within one giant pentagram. Around the edge of the altar were candles, burning brightly in the darkness, and yet even though they were there in their hundreds, they had no impact upon the black. But perhaps the worst were the stains that marked the altar’s length. Mikel knew instinctively what this obscenity was for, and that it had been used. Even in the dark he knew those stains were blood.

  The man, finally having arrived, shook off his cowl and took his place at the head of the altar. And yet still Mikel could make out no single feature of his face. It was as though he had no face, as though the light itself shunned him, unwilling to mar its brilliance on his darkness.

  On cue, though what cue he couldn’t tell, the assembled black robed figures began chanting, their voices filling the cavern with sound, but a sound so ugly that no one surely would have wanted to hear it. It was a chant he slowly realized, but a chant in some strange and terrible language, and with a rhythm he’d never encountered. Its rhythms were alien and disturbing to his ears, sending shock waves of chaos through him, but it was the words themselves that really bothered him. He didn’t understand what was said, knew that even if he could have made the words out he wouldn’t have understood them, and yet he still knew they were utterly malignant. He was lucky not to understand.

  As they chanted the dark man raised his arms and spoke, though like his face, there was nothing to indicate what he said. His speech had no meaning that Mikel could detect, and he wasn’t even sure it had a sound. It was more a feeling of living horror. It assailed his body, lodging in his bones and raking him with the sound of fingers screeching down a black board. It attacked his mind, bringing images without order, a chaos of death and misery mixed with pain and despair. It even screamed at his soul. He would have fled this nightmare vision given form, but the hand on his shoulders, the song in his heart and the angel by his side told him he was safe and loved in her arms. He listened, the always logical thief within him knowing that this was important, that this was what she wanted from him and he had to be prepared.

  Before long the dark robes parted and the first of the sacrifices was brought through, bound and gagged. But Mikel knew the real binding wasn’t the cord wrapped around those hands and feet, it was the curse that was being chanted. The victim was trapped.

  And then as they placed their captive on the altar ready for the sacrifice, some of the wrappings around him came loose, and Mikel was shocked to see wings. White wings, much the worse for wear, denuded of feathers in places, scabby and blood covered, but wings none the less. In shock he realized that the sacrifice wasn’t a human being as he had expected, he was an angel.

  The horror and anger that raged through him at the sight was more than could be born and he cried out. Only Sherial held him secure. Yet through her he could somehow also feel her own sense of horror, reacting to the sight as she remembered it, exactly as did his. She had surely learned of this long ago, yet the vibrancy of her pain was as though it was still fresh in her mind. As though it had just happened.

  Quickly, efficiently, brutally the gowned figures staked out the angel. Ropes were bound around arms, legs and wings, and then pulled apart like twigs. The ends were fastened to catches in the altar’s sides, and the angel was pinned, spread-eagled and helpless. He was scared. Whoever this angel was, Mikel knew he was scared. Fear shone in his eyes. Fear and something more. Horror, as he gazed upon the dark man. It was as though he had seen something simply too foul to believe.

  Through Sherial, Mikel also understood how the angel had been captured; it was written in his terrified eyes. For no angel should ever fear. This angel feared, therefore he too was too far from heaven. He had lost his faith, his contact with the Lord, and without it he was defenceless against this nightmare. And he knew it. For the fear itself kept him from returning to the fold, and that made him more afraid. It was a vicious circle.

  The dark man drew a sword, a horrid great black blade that shone like an evil light-devouring parasite. Mikel knowing what was too come, tried to look away, he didn’t want to see this. But he had no choice. If he didn’t see this, he wouldn’t understand. Sherial was with him, comforting him, telling him it was all right, that it was only a vision. But he knew that it was more than that. That this was a truth he was seeing, something that had already happened.

  The dark man told the angel that he was doomed. That his power, all his life and his soul were to be his. That he should bow down and accept what was to come. Mikel still couldn’t fathom a single word he spoke, but he understood that perfectly.

  The angel resisted. Bound, gagged, in pain, scared, and in mortal peril for both his life and his soul, he resisted. He told his brother no. For finally Mikel understood that this dark man was also an angel, but not one of God’s. He had fallen. He had rejected the Lord’s power in search of his own. And in order to acquire it, he was somehow devouring that of his brothers, seeking them out when they became weak, stealing everything that they were.

  In a flash the sword descended, silent and deadly, and went straight through the angel’s right wing, severing it cleanly like a scalpel. So sharp was the blade that it went on through the stone alter for another foot or more, before finally stopping.

  The angel screamed, a scream of such absolute pain and suffering that it rent the air around him, and several of the black robes fell down, hands over their ears. But it was not the end. A second stroke, faster and stronger than the first severed his other wing, and this time there was only silence. Without his wings Mikel knew, the angel had been cut off from both the lord and his own power. He was no longer an angel. He was mortal and he suffered.

  Yet he didn’t die though the shock and the blood loss was surely too great for him to survive. Death would no doubt have been a blessed relief, but in some way it was denied to him. Through Sherial he gathered that death for an angel was a much less certain thing than for a human. Even when so badly wounded. This one; Jason he was told, might survive thousands of years in this cold and ugly tomb before being released by death’s infinite care.

  Sound, missing for some time, suddenly returned, filling the cavern with its heart-rending quality. The angel sobbed, dry cold retches that came from his heart and soul. Mikel knew the pain of his injuries was the least of the angel’s suffering. For now he was lost, the most dreadful fate that any angel could suffer. The sense of shear wretched horror from Sherial as she felt her brother’s pain, told him that.

  How could these people have done this? How could they not have not reacted to the sufferi
ng they caused? Mikel couldn’t even begin to understand the sheer coldness of these people. He wanted to vomit, to cry, to scream and rage at this monstrous evil. Only the hand and love of Sherial held him back.

  The body of the angel, not dead but surely wanting nothing more than to die, was carried away by a number of the black robes. He did not resist. He could not. In some way he was now powerless, - completely helpless, and yet the harm was even greater than that. He was mortal. A trail of dark splashes marked their path, the angel’s blood, staining that darkened stone. The only sounds made in that vast chamber were those of the angel as he cried out his grief and pain.

  He was taken to a dungeon cell, though to describe it as such did not come close to the dark rat infested horror that it actually was. And as his body was thrown in it like a piece of garbage, others where there to catch it. Many others.

  It was pure blackness in that place, the stench was overpowering and the sound of millions upon millions of little evil feet was almost deafening. Yet Mikel knew as if he had both seen and heard them, that those who had caught him were other angels who had been through the same fate. Immortal and mortal both, damned by their brothers, yet refusing to fall, all they could do was survive and suffer.

  Angels too he realized, can go to hell.

  Yet the angels were not alone in that hell, for somehow, through Sherial, he understood there were humans present also. How they had gotten there and who they were he had no idea. He just felt them there, suffering along with the rest. They too were unable to escape their hell by death. Mortal they might be, but death was still denied them. No one would be allowed to die in that hell, not when they could suffer for eternity, - and provide food. That too he understood through Sherial. These people were cattle to the demons. Their souls slowly consumed like men ate animal flesh.

  Meanwhile, the dark man had left the sword buried in the altar and was now holding the wings up high above his head. Their light shone brightly in that miserable place. And around his hands a blackness formed. A darkness that spread its way through the wings, eating, devouring, and becoming stronger, like some insane, evil cancer. Soon the wings changed from flesh and blood to some sort of two dimensional tissue paper imitation of wings, and then a cob web lattice of light with ever larger and larger holes growing in it.

  In a terrifyingly short time there was nothing at all left of those wings.

  The dark man, creature screamed then, a howl of triumph and hate. It was the primal hatred of life. It spoke of hearts being broken, of bodies being crushed. The sounds of orphaned children crying, of the innocent being condemned, and of the betrayed learning of their betrayal; all were all part of it. But it was more.

  It was dark and angry. It was cold and loathsome. If a sound could ever be slimy then this was it. Above all else it was powerful. Echoing around that chamber it ran like the wind, blowing many of the black robes off their feet and leaving others cowering behind stalagmites. Yet what good would that do he wondered, as if anything, the scream built in power, its volume rising like an approaching hurricane. Did they understand, he wondered? Did the assistants finally guess that they too were doomed? Perhaps. For Mikel understood that they were not meant to live. They had served their purpose, capturing, holding and finally torturing the angel, now they were useless. The dark man did not keep useless people around.

  Several of the black robes tried to run though there was no hope for them. There was nowhere to run to in that small cave. Nor had there ever been any chance of their escaping. The exits were all guarded. The sound ripped through them, a physical force that tore their robes from their bodies, and then their skins. For the first time Mikel saw that the black robes were indeed human, though only for a short time. After that they were dead, their bodies spread thin by the sound. Smeared across the walls and floor, almost like jam. A blood red jam.

  Even as the hundreds of black robes perished in that inferno of sound, it grew again in volume, ripping apart the stalagmites too, sending their fragments hurtling against the walls, polishing them smooth.

  Then without warning, it ended. The candles, what few of them still worked, brightened again, and a scene of devastation was revealed. The entire floor had become a smooth puddle of ichor with the occasional bone or strip of cloth sticking out. The walls too, what few of them he could see, had been painted with blood and bone to the ceiling. Not a single one of the black robes had survived the blast. Their usefulness had ended, and they had been retired. Doubtless there would be another batch waiting to take their place.

  Mikel felt the beginnings of a hysterical laugh growing deep within. Vomit was not far behind. It was almost ironic, and doubtless a form of justice for anybody who could be a party to what had just occurred. But not a justice he could ever accept. He didn’t know what would be right for their crime, but he knew absolutely that this was wrong. No doubt they had been promised everything from immortality to riches. Instead they had been blended into porridge. No wonder they called this demon and his ilk the father of lies.

  The dark man surveyed the cavern, somehow pleased with his handiwork. Mikel still could not see his face, but he knew instinctively that the foulness was smiling. A self-satisfied grin of triumph as he gazed upon the devastation surrounding him. Smoothly, faster than the eye could readily follow, he bent low to his feet, which were knee deep in the ooze, and dipped a finger into it. As he raised it to his mouth, Mikel felt a terrible need to run and hide followed quickly by an urge to throw up. Like a baby he tried to crawl back inside himself - anything not to have to see that final act, but he simply wasn’t fast enough.

  In a second it was over, though for Mikel, and he guessed, for Sherial, there would be no end. The dark man raised his head up high and howled, a sound unworthy of any dog, or any other of God’s creatures. But then this was no longer one of his. Around him other shapes were approaching, other smaller darknesses, no doubt coming to receive their part of the feast. They skittered like rats in a darkened alley, approaching cautiously, doubtless afraid of their master, but hungry. They were always hungry.

  It ended then, and Mikel suddenly found himself in the bright sunshine of his home. He was lying on the ground, body somehow drawn up into a foetal position and he felt no inclination to move. Sherial was with him, as he had known she was all the way through that obscenity he had just witnessed. She was holding him like a mother would a small child with nightmares. Yet no child should ever have known the waking horrors he had just seen.

  His cheeks were wet, and he realized without surprise, he’d been crying uncontrollably at some point, though he didn’t remember it. A mess on the ground beside him told Mikel he’d lost his lunch too. Again it didn’t surprise him.

  Sherial’s touch was the warmth he couldn’t have lived without, for her love was the only thing that kept that dark nightmare he had seen, at bay within him. Her hand on his shoulder was a lifeline, and he clung to it, while trying to find something stable within his soul to cling to.

  He’d never seen, never really even imagined anything like what she’d shown him, and the pain of those who had been tortured was as real to him as his own. In some way it was his own pain.

  How, he asked, could Sherial live with the memory of what she’d shown him? For she too had seen it, had felt it, surely more intensely than he himself since he had witnessed it only through her. He knew it was only because of her faith that she could endure it. She believed, and that gave her the strength to survive anything. He never had, probably never would, and so was vulnerable. The only thing he could believe in was Sherial, and he stuck to her like glue.

  But it wasn’t quite over. Though he heard no words even in his mind, nor even was shown an image, he suddenly understood that there was more he needed to know. More that was already somehow, buried deep within his mind.

  Taking his courage in both hands, he looked at the rest and saw a village. A primitive village with several dozen huts, little more than lean-tos built of sticks and mud, and a dirt ar
ea between them. He saw a few people moving about there and even though he couldn’t see anything clearly about them, he knew that they were like him, people the angels had also asked to help. People who had failed.

  He couldn’t see those villagers, he knew nothing about them, yet when he looked as closely as he dared he saw that they lived with their failure. It was in their movements, their gestures, their voices and their eyes. And yet there was something more. It was as though their failure had somehow become magnified. As though they were totally responsible for the fate of those they had failed. Them, not the demons. In some way he guessed, the demons had hurt them. Had made them suffer on Earth in a way others surely couldn’t until they reached Hell.

  And it was this risk he faced if he chose to help. Sherial told him that as strongly as she could, her thoughts flashing inside his tired mind. If he failed, then he too could become as these. Doomed.

  It was a nightmare looking at their beaten forms, as little as he could make out of them. And for Sherial too he knew it was a living horror. Angels had picked these people, had asked them as she had asked him, and had watched them fall. The pain they lived with, their angels also knew. Yet Sherial wasn’t frightened of her possible suffering to come. She was scared for his.