Chapter 5
"Yes, there's always tomorrow, before your last setting sun..." - Popular, X-Generation misconception.
"Given the eternities of the universe, the countless millennia of moons, planets, suns, galaxies, the seeming meaningless passages of time in the heavens, why does everything seem to boil down to perfect timing?" - Radio interview with Michael Rainsford (Mythologies of the New Millennium)
Gerde arrived in the little, sleepy town of Melkiinstal, who's quiet was exhaustion from weeping. A small place, it's people's lives intimately interwoven, she could not help but attend the memorial being held in the town's heart. The rest of the community was closed, emptied of mere business concerns. Even children, normally blithe and boisterous in the midst of death's aftermath, quietly contemplated their odds in this new world. She stood at the edge of the crowd, and no one questioned her presence. Many strangers to the city had heard of their story, and a few arrived from quite distant places. Grief was not a private package to be miserly parceled out this day, and the strangers wanly smiled at her in their best welcome and understanding.
Gabriel, in his blacker moods, had sometimes told her of similar news stories from the States - "human" stories without a hint of supernatural involvement. He also told of how short-lived the impact of these common events had on the American psyche, especially as pertained to social change.
"They're just one story out of the growing hundreds, Gerde. Maybe each becoming a little more gory than the last - and getting more newscasters excited."
"But don't people... I mean, where is the Outrage? In England, when those two little boys took a 2 year-old, and... beat him to death, there were riots. In Scotland, when a boy accidentally killed himself with his family's handgun, even more gun control laws were made. Why is it so different in the United States?"
"Didn't you know? To be a true, strong, hip American, such things can't affect you. Life merrily goes on..."
"But this IS life. How can it go on in this manner?" Gerde was glad, for the first time, that she and Wolfgang had never set foot in America.
"Survival of the Fittest, Gerde. I don't think the other zebras look at the one with its innards being slurped up on the tundra going 'poor guy.' They're just glad it wasn't them."
"You don't really believe that, do you? You did always say you were a 'product of your time and place.'"
"Maybe if you care too much, you just wouldn't be able to survive at all..."
She didn't believe that. Her whole family line cared very much, and they survived. No excuse, Heir Knight. She looked at all the people around her. It was nearing the end of the ceremony. The onlookers were placing flowers and toys on the memorials each child's family had made with things the children had loved. Gerde was not as dispassionate as Gabriel. (And would never be). He would have noted how grief, being such an awful emotion, was something people strangely thought should be shared. Knight was always edging around his emotions, battling it as if it was some foreign beast to be eradicated. She feared someday that he would succeed.
Unfortunately, Gerde herself had too many feelings at the moment. As she looked at the children, their pictures in antique frames, Catherine's eyes full of questions and delight, Alex of innocent, quiet exuberance, she felt her pouch rattling beside her, full of coiled vengeance. And she felt she had enough "righteous" anger in her to use its secret contents well.
*********************
Gabriel smelled the room long before his eyes could distinguish the slight glow of greenish light ahead of him. The passageway had opened up after the first, crawling, hundred yards or so, so he was standing upright, as he waded through a thick, cold jelly of congealed wastes. The tunnel had grown progressively colder, and he was shivering as he placed both hands on each side of the wall to maintain his balance in the ever-heightening sludge. He was brushing up against solid piles now, and could discern a few items. Entrails smudged up against his stomach, separated from kin by a mere half-inch of living flesh. Agitated forebrains and eyes followed his movements, as vermin disposed of their movable feasts. Merely deeply gagging, for he had not eaten for (days?) quite some time, he tried not looking downward as he moved through this passage. He did notice that it was the bodies that gave off the strange glow, and some of the creatures invading them had populated onto the nearby walls. His hands became encased in them, but they did not bite their living host. Another partial body, animated by the bright, parasitic invasion, squirmed in the pools, turning over in salute to his passing. He quickly looked away, a risky strategy he knew to unknown danger, but he could not stop himself. Even so, he glimpsed frantic, unfinished sockets and a laughing tongue as they welcomed him to their experience. They knew he was here, and were heartened. The area opened further, and soon he had to choose a path among the heaped organs.
Knight felt this place must have been recently created especially for him. Images out of his fears and imagination. The dismantled bodies could not really have been so wetly preserved for such a long time in this ancient place. They were showing him that they knew what he was afraid of. He fought himself not to turn back.
"Gabriel." Someone was singing his name up ahead.
"Gracie?" he asked falteringly. The impossible accumulation loomed over him now, and toppling, would easily bury him in their collapse.
"Come over here, Gabriel. Look at this place!" She spoke so easily, as if this dread were some mere curiosity. He could hardly breathe here, let alone speak casually. (And so eagerly.) He stopped.
"Come ON, Gabriel. Look!" she chided in her merry voice, laughing at his hesitation.
"Gracie! I don't have the amulet. I can't... help you."
"You don't need it. Just come over here!" She grew impatient, but was still joyful for the game.
Knight looked in every direction around him. There was no other way out of this trap except ahead, and he almost wanted that. She had always had faith in Knight, much more than himself many times, despite his bravado, despite everything. If it was really Grace, there was a chance. He moved forward.
She had her back to him. Around her, chains of pierced human bones fell from above, ending in severed limbs waiting for rot to cleanse their added link. The ties were thick, strong femur bones to hold their victims, both owners and new sacrifices, each generation, steadily in place. She was perusing one new limb like a pearl hunter splitting a mollusk, carefully examining its squirming contents. She turned, and Knight wasn't sure what he saw first, the flash of her predator eyes and rictus smile, or the silver in her hand.
"Gracie. Please." Knight had been half prepared for this by Rainsford's descriptions of Celtic rituals and deities, and Malia's memory, but backed away nonetheless by what had been Grace.
"Don't be so coy, Gabriel. Its unfamiliarity does not suit you. The time for such charming games is past." Her hungry smile grew beyond human lips. It looked like she had suffered much. Long cuts from chin to waist slowly bleed through her shredded clothes, scratches and (glass?) debris covering her exposed skin. There was blood on her lips, and even in her hair. "You've always loved the hunt, Gabriel, the curiosity more than the morals. Don't you like the catch?"
"Grace!" he yelled at her, trying to wake her to the cherished name.
"Such a simple name," she smiled, "and so wrong."
The room brightened as if outdoors, and Knight covered his darkened eyes against it. He stumbled against the piled bodies, some of children he now recognized, and the room began collapsing as towered heap fell against heap. Its current easily flowed over Gabriel. Grace merely rose above it all.
"Strange, misguided, innocent Shattenjager," she said, as she reached into the tide and pulled him from its sea.
***********************
Grace set Gabriel gently against the wall, framing and fussing over him as over a favorite artwork. Thin, pointed rods of speckless metal pierced each of his wrists, delicately inserted so not even the tiniest of arteries was nicked. They held him as if his hands were in a vice. His legs were more conventionally manacled, unlike those outside, but Knight hardly felt those bonds, the pain in his wrists out demanding all other sensations.
When Knight was first pulled from the wreckage of bodies and dragged to this room, he struck Nakimura as hard as he could, but avoided her deepest wounds. The strike meant nothing, of course. She easily forced him to his knees, shackling his legs while holding both his wrists behind him within her one, small, slim hand. He outweighed her by almost twice, yet could no more break that bind than the one on him now. She stood on one leg while fastening the other, and all he could do was hope she would not break the bone. Grace now took out her silver once more. It was a long blade, ancient, with nicks and wear in the elaborate handle from generations of use. The edge itself, the more important part, was recently, finely, lovingly honed. He could see himself, hanging, in its brightness as she brought it forth.
Gabriel did not want to speak, found, in fact, his vocal cords dust in his dry, convulsing throat. His breathing was ragged as she leaned in closer to him, watching. But he was sure this was still Gracie, and the only option he had left was talking with her.
"Gracie... remember the time when I finally got to talk to your parents? You were cowering at the register, cringing, because you knew I would say exactly the wrong things as I showed them around the new bookstore. But you didn't really have to worry because they weren't really listening to me blather, and was mostly telling me what a wonderful person you are. Guess they must have thought there was something there, or that maybe I could have been good enough for you... or..."
"All those times are over, Gabriel."
"Grace... please... talk to me. You always knew what to say. You could always get me to see things, things I needed to see, when I was in trouble..."
"Shhh," Grace whispered, "there is no time for this." She kissed him, and then began to cut.
*********************
Betrayed blood spilled from Gabriel's body and soaked the hard, stone earth. The ground accepted the offering like a sieve, faithfully carrying it to the lair of Farral Beithir. The whole edifice pulsed with the heat of the reawakening Worm, except for this cell, which was as cold and clinical as Beithir's soul.
Gabriel hung from the agony of his wrists, delicate bones nearly splitting from the stress. He could no longer stand on the Achilles' and other tendons Morrigan expertly severed, and his entire weight focused on twin points of suffering.
Morrigan watched him, with hunger. His anomalous blood woke such appetites within her, as it surely did with Beithir. But she only watched him, not daring to divert a single drop from her waking, hungry Desire.
All his life, Knight had avoided pain. When his parents died, his eighth year, he had cried for two days (one day for each of them, he had always thought, and far less than they deserved), and then not again for nearly 13 years. When their faces came up to him in memory, he switched them off, until he could hardly remember their appearance at all. In his teen years, whenever Gran would talk of her children, he would stare at her blankly, chilling her to the heart. Knight had drifted through life, unattached to anything that could be so easily taken away. The world to him was a highly unstable, dangerous place, and he congratulated himself for getting through so much of it with the minimum of scars, and (he thought) the maximum of pleasures. Given all this, until very recent events, he could never have conceived of, much less mentally prepare himself for, such pain. Like a coveted rabbit prepared for fresh feasting, hooked, drained, and skinned while still alive, Morrigan offered Gabriel to Beithir. It was only because he had lost so much blood (albeit slowly) and so weak, that he was, not now, screaming, crying (and begging) in agony.
Gabriel's wounds almost matched Grace's now. One cut started from the slight cleft in his chin and meandered down along his vocal cords, carefully drawn, precisely focused along such delicate, deadly areas - then sliced across his chest, exposing shiny planes of muscle. His living skin was ripped there, a thin layer of whiteness thickening and ending in deeply red, weeping rags. Knight felt that wound throb with every fought breath. The cut continued across his stomach, sketched itself deeply within his abdominal muscles, and exposed the jutting bone of his inner hip. He remembered every inch, surgically exact so as not to spill too much blood all at once. His throat was raw from the dissection, as Morrigan savored every unwilling, earned outcry. There were many other cuts, one outer thigh almost accordioned with them, and his body became an inescapable cage of anguish.
Grace pulled Knight's head up by his apple locks. She offered him water in an ivory chalice. He could smell its sweetness.
"Drink this."
Knight turned his head slightly away, refusing. Even that small movement took too much dizzying effort and pain.
She gently stroked his lips and cheek with the smooth coldness of the cup. Its complexly carved, porous surface soaked up the blood and tears resting there.
"It will help you. Drink."
"Help me how, Gracie?" he barely whispered, but knew Morrigan would hear no matter how quiet. "Die or live? Which is worse, Grace? Tell me... which are you?"
Gabriel forced himself to look directly at her, despite the darkness that began closing on him. He searched for Grace. The one he always asked advice from, the one he trusted, who sometimes knew him better now than he. She blinked, and for a moment, a moment, Grace looked back at him.
Morrigan pulled Knight's head further back, and poured the liquid into his mouth. He closed his eyes and swallowed it, any refusal a mere pretense. Morrigan probably could have slit his throat and introduced the substance directly, but this pretend humanity pleased the goddess, and Knight didn't argue the point.
It was not the same water as from the other well, that distillery of bodies. This substance had Life in it. Too much life, as it both burned and cooled a path down his worn throat. He felt it passing from cell membrane to cell membrane, like a living thing, faster than any nutrient or medicine, and more like a vapor (soul?) than a fluid. His wounds began to seal, not quite natural healing wherein scars knitted and whitened (they were certainly there, like medals), but tolerable, as Grace's must have been. Lost blood renewed, or was replaced, it seemed, by the fluid itself. Knight felt he had two souls in him now, his own, which he had never felt so distinctly before, and that of the waters. He looked at Morrigan, and even she looked so different now. He understood her, and realized how much he had lost.
She held the emptied cup before him. "The Water of Life, from the Well of Souls. You are reborn, Shadow Hunter, but not to God. Or to shadows. To me."
***********************
Morrigan showed Gabriel the Labyrinth. Its paths were secret, and only known to the gods, and to those souls who died therein. The Well within could heal, heal the sick of wounds, heal the saddened to hope, heal even, so legends said, the heart of the Worm. Both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life were watered from this place, their existence in the vast maze an even greater, guarded secret.
"I will show you this Well, Gabriel, so you can see what men could have become, what they could still almost be if chosen. Then you will see what we know, and know why we seek an end."
Gabriel pulled back, breaking Morrigan's grip on his hand. He realized then that he was also powerful, not as strong as she, but certainly changed from before.
"A Shattenjager afraid of the Truth? Afraid that it is actually you who is the enemy? You can tell I do not now lie. And perhaps, never have." She almost did look like Gracie again, that teasing, righteous look. He wondered if he still looked at all like Knight.
"What will I see in the Well, Grace? Tell me, and I will believe you."
Grace sighed. "Revelations, Gabriel. Revelations."
***********************
Rainsford dropped down into a thorn bush. It was a small thorn bush, quite dried and dead (which made it thornier), but a painful plant, blown in through the hole, nonetheless. He yelped, then quickly quieted when something moved upon him from up ahead. The thing was fast as it raced at him, not as a frightened, startled animal caught in the gloom confronting its predator, but in lethal enmity. Its single claw flashed up in Rainsford's surprised beam.
"No, wait," was all the cunning Michael could think to say.
Surprisingly, the figure hesitated, and waited. Michael had a few seconds of thought.
"Er, look." Rainsford shown the flashlight at his own face, one bemused now by his own strange actions. "Don't I look harmless?"
"Who are you!" the figure shouted, its hand still ready and pointed.
"Um, Michael Rainsford. History professor at Cambridge University, and sometimes amateur, nighttime spelunker. Now working in Melkiinstal College. Do you need a curriculum vitae?"
The figure backed up a little at this strangeness.
"I have nothing on me that could be considered a weapon, except a few spikes in my backside, and those only harm me. Er, do you know a way out of here?"
"Why are you here?" The figure was still very fierce.
"Right now, mostly to get out," Rainsford lied. "And how about you... miss?" Michael moved his flashlight beam from off his face and onto Gerde's. She had lowered her arm somewhat, the deadly blade in her hand still unsheathed, a dangerous, unfamiliar look in her eye. She looked (possessed?) maddened, and again he worried about the air in this place. He directed the beam upward, so both could regard each other in the impasse. Rainsford looked up too, exposing his vulnerable throat. Such a gesture, baring one's neck to obviously dangerous "teeth", was one used in wolf packs anyway, to denote inoffense, and sometimes Michael found such animal behaviors strangely useful in human society. "Well, I guess if we had to, we could get out using my rope, but it would be a very hard climb directly up..." Of course, he wasn't going to turn back now upon just arriving, but perhaps the woman had been inside here quite a long time, probably too long, judging by her state. She did look wild.
"No, there is an easier way." Gerde warily put her weapon away, into a beautiful, concealed cover that Rainsford wanted a better look at. She tucked both into her belt, loosely, affording easy access just in case. "I have a diagram of this place. It's too strange for me to interpret, and perhaps I need some scholarly help with it."
"Diagram?" Michael wondered if it was as ancient as that unusual knife the woman wielded. "I used to be good at pictographs, and such. I have seen plenty. Their simplicity can make them hard to decipher. Mind if I do look?"
"I left my things over there." Gerde gestured behind them with a quick shake of her head, but still kept her eyes on him. "You... surprised me. I did not think I would have company here. Well, not this kind."
"I promise not to surprise you again in any way." Michael grinned, but felt slightly awkward at how Gerde said "this kind," as if she knew much more about the situation than he wanted to know. He thought about the oddity of the universe, as he peered at the stars through the opening above a final time.