Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean (15 page)

~

“My hair’s standing on end,” Geoff said.

“No need to be scared,” Constantine said. Adding lightly, “Except, of course, of almost every bloody thing down here.”

“I’m not scared; it’s literally standing on end.”

Constantine realized his hair was standing up too, even more than usual. “I see what you mean, Geoff; my hair’s all at attention as well. You’re looking like a bloody 1980s rock star, your hair like that.”

They were feeling the powerful electrical field given off by the arcs of lightning between the curiously warped electrodes, five of them, just where the points of a pentagram would be—a pentagram three hundred feet in diameter—around the gigantic central column of the torquing shaft that emerged into the chamber from far below. Eventually the same axle connected, far below, to the cranks that were turned by the crankers like the late Arfur, trapped forever in the bottommost chamber of the Sunless Realm.

Geoff, Balf, and Constantine—Balf looming over both of them—stood on a leather-covered iron balcony high up on a wall overlooking the “alchemical transfusion chamber,” as Balf called it: a bubble-shaped separate cavern above Balf’s domicile. The silver-coated struts that ran to the electrodes from the central shaft whipped around and around, turning between each crackling, eye-searing discharge of purple lightning. Crackle, roar—and then the five struts, like vanes on an umbrella, would spin each to the next electrode. Crackle, roar—spin. The whole construction was about two hundred fifty feet high and one hundred fifty across. Now and then Constantine seemed to glimpse big lumbering spectral figures in the darkness between the electrodes.

“There’s power in the air here, Balf,” Constantine observed. “If this is the source of the King’s power, why don’t we just pop in there and, I don’t know, fling a wrench in the works? We could have this whole expedition over, bob’s your uncle, in no time and I’m out of this hell hole and looking for a likely pub.”

“You do not see the guardian demons? The Il-Sorgs are there. Look close, when the lightning flashes, and you may glimpse them.”

“Oh. Them? The big chaps with the tusks? They don’t look so tough; you could take them.”

“I’m afraid I could not, as you say, ‘take them.’ ”

Constantine looked closer. Then he nodded. Difficult to make out what they looked like—creatures thirty feet high, made of some astral material; they were bipeds, with great up-curving tusks, resembling the guardian demons seen on temples in the Far East. It was hard to get an astrotaxological fix on them, for they flickered in and out of visibility and for the most part weren’t visible at all. But that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

“Right. They look like what my American friends would call major assholes. But isn’t there a way to get past the bastards?”

“This machine provides the kind the energy that sustains him, and gives him magical vitality, but the source of his sorcerous control over the kingdom is said to be elsewhere. In a certain chamber in the palace, locked away, there resides a powerful being, trapped, whose magic the King uses to give him power over the gripplers and the harpies. Were that being released, the Il-Sorg would be released in turn, and the machine could be stopped. With the machine stopped, the King’s power would diminish, his vitality draining . . . and his minions would scatter.”

Constantine snorted in disgust. “Never simple, is it? Just once I’d like to shoot some bastard in the head or throw one fucking switch and get it all over with. Well let’s do this right. A botch job won’t do. And MacCrawley’s involved somehow; got to get him out of the way. Right. Here’s the plan, then, Balf, if you’re of a mind to trust me . . .”

They spoke for a good ten minutes, and then Balf escorted Geoff and Constantine to a staircase that angled upward along the wall of a great high-ceilinged gallery. Balf led the way, taking three steps for each one of theirs, waiting patiently on the topmost landing—he had learned patience over half a millennium—till they at last arrived, puffing, at a height Constantine estimated to be some three hundred yards above the floor. Here stood two towering doors, each made of bands of iron framing blocks of black stone. The portal was about eighty feet high, the doors weighing countless tons, their stone panels figured with threatening images of harpies, trolls, and skull-faced soldiers, above which was emblazoned the head of a cadaverous man wearing a five-pointed crown.

“It is well I am here,” Balf said. “For you would never be able to open these doors alone.”

Balf reached into a pocket of his robe, took out the crystals he had used earlier, and tapped them on the door in carefully selected spots. The crystals vibrated, and a fulsome clicking came responsively from within the metal portals. “It is done: they are unlocked. I will push them open and retreat below. You know how to call me.” So saying, he passed Constantine two of the crystals, which the magician put in his trench coat pocket.

Balf set himself and slowly heaved the great doors open. Then he hastily retreated down the stairs.

The doors continued to swing inward after he’d already gone, creaking vastly as they went, with a sound like a god tearing a moon of metal into pieces . . .

Constantine and Geoff walked through the door, into a hallway every bit as high and wide as the enormous doors. It seemed empty at first, and their footsteps echoed. Peculiar perfumes—incenses from some forgotten Atlantean temple—wafted to them from the darkness at the end of the hallway. The walls were carved with figures blurred by erosion from the trickling water running over them into gutters along the edges of the floor. Were the figures etched on the walls demons, gods, or men? The distinctions had merged over time.

“John?” Geoff asked, his voice hushed. “You sure about this? I’m no magician; don’t really know what I’m about here. Wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

“Going to need you, boy,” Constantine said, lighting a cigarette. “Not sure how yet. But I know I’ll need your help. Remember, you’re my apprentice.”

“Right. Your apprentice. I’m fucked, aren’t I?”

“Probably.”

That’s when the doors at the end of the hallway swung open and the skull-faced soldiers swarmed through and charged.

7

IT’S LATE GOTHIC, OF COURSE!

“I
really think we should take our time and reconsider this, MacCrawley,” Smithson said, nervously gazing at the tunnel entrance in the barrow.

It was a gray, drizzly morning, but birds were chirping and insects buzzing in the woods around the clearing containing the mossy old barrow, and it felt almost cheerful out, in comparison to the hungry obscurity of the tunnel waiting for them.

“Don’t let it spook you,” MacCrawley said, his voice a study in mockery. “It’s just another tunnel. Why, you’ve been in deeper ones when you’ve taken the Underground—oh, I forgot, you never have taken the Underground, M’Lord. It’s limos for you; a point of pride, yes? Well. I assure you it’s just a tunnel. You won’t encounter any peasants in it. Other things perhaps, but you who have gone through
several
initiatic trials of the Servants of Transfiguration could not possibly be afraid of a tunnel to Hell.”

Smithson whirled, looking at him with the eyes of a frightened deer. “To
Hell?
You’re joking!”

“No, I’m using poetic license. It isn’t actually Hell. Oh, Hell exists, but it is not ‘under’ the earth. It is forever at right angles to us, like paradise; it is in another realm of whereness. No, this is merely ‘hellish.’ But it is nothing that a Great Initiate like yourself would be afraid of, surely!”

And with that he handed Smithson the electric torch and made an “after you!” gesture.

“You don’t mean I’m to go first, MacCrawley?”

“I assumed you would want to! You are of the high blood, as you have often reminded me! That makes you a
leader!”

At last this mockery was too much for Smithson. He switched the torch on to see if it was operating and plunged into the tunnel.

Chuckling, MacCrawley ducked his head and went in after him.

They descended in a winding, looping, down-angled tunnel, dirt sometimes pattering down from the roof, making Smithson jump, which usually resulted in his knocking his head on the low stony ceiling. It seemed to Smithson they descended for more them an hour, and it got colder as they went so that he regretted not bringing an overcoat. As they descended, Smithson found himself thinking of the gold he had transferred to MacCrawley and how he might conceivably get it back. Perhaps he might persuade the King Underneath to seize MacCrawley on some pretext. Surely royalty would understand royalty . . .

Still they descended.

At last they came to a flight of steps carved from naked rock, bringing them into a large dusty room, which was pierced by a cross-tunnel.

“You can switch off your light here,” MacCrawley said.

Smithson was loathe to do so, but he switched it off and found there was still a soft bluish illumination coming from short glowing stalactites on the curved ceiling of the tunnel. Then he stepped hastily back as a grasping gray-black hand on a long, stretching arm, more like a tentacle to Smithson than like the limb implied by the hand, reached toward him, fingers wriggling as it sought his throat.

“MacCrawley!” Smithson squeaked.

“Leave this to me!” MacCrawley commanded, stepping between him and the hand. “I’ve come better prepared this time!” He drew an amulet from his pocket and dangled it before the four-fingered hand. On the amulet was an opal, carved in the image of a kingly figure with a five-pointed crown. The exploring, predatory hand stopped moving, drawing back an inch. Then it stretched out its fingers and seemed to sniff at the amulet without quite touching it. The hand then made a gesture that Smithson took to be a kind of
salaam
and withdrew, like a worm contracting into an apple, to vanish into the left-hand passage.

Smithson swallowed and slowly exhaled the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding.

“This way,” MacCrawley said, leading him to the right.

They trekked another twenty yards before Smithson asked, “The King Underneath has been . . . been informed that he will have, ah, visiting royalty?”

“He has. Through this door . . .”

They passed through a crumbling wooden door, the old iron hinges sagging, and entered a cavern bigger than any he’d ever seen before.

Smithson gasped, gazing at the Palace of Phosphor, an intricate Gothic structure glowing with an inner light, and set atop a ziggurat-like formation to his right; on the stony ground below it was a collection of buildings that made him think of one of the old Roman settlements unearthed by archaeologists—another Pompeii. “To think that all this was beneath our very feet all the time that we . . .”

His voice trailed off as the gaunt, pale, red-eyed, hairless troops emerged from the streets nearest the palace, running up a ramp to their overlook.

“We must run, MacCrawley—those men—!”

“They are the Fallen Romans! Do not move! Stand where you are! To run would be disastrous!”

The soldiers rushed up to surround them, their skull-like faces unfathomable—but certainly not friendly.

MacCrawley held up the amulet. “Some of you may know me from my previous visit!” he said. Then he spoke to them in another language, some bastardization of Latin, Smithson thought. He caught the word
socialis,
which he remembered to mean
allies.
Their leader, an almost spectral figure, tall and thin in a black leather cuirass, a curved sword in his bony hand, nodded in response to MacCrawley’s speech and gestured for them to walk ahead of the escort—or perhaps ahead of their captors—and they started for the palace.

And Smithson thought:
Oh God, what have I got myself into?

~

Maureen was a little sadder every time she went into the garden behind the little house she’d shared with Bosky. Her roses and irises and the little poplar tree, bluish in the glow from the phosphorescent ceiling of the cavern, were bowed, shriveling, crisping away. Perhaps some of the grass was still living, but nothing would live much longer in the garden, not without sun, without water. What water they had in the village was being hoarded. The town store had already been looted of food and bottled water; luckily she’d had some water put away before the “big fall.” A shadow passed over her and she looked up to see a harpy—surely those were harpies?—flapping about a hundred feet overhead, glancing fiercely down at her, moving on. Others circled higher up . . . terrifying creatures. They stopped anyone who tried to leave the village; Bosky and Garth had gotten out just in time. She wondered if they were still alive.

But she knew they were. She would feel it, if they were dead. She’d always had the ability to know something of those important to her, even when they were off somewhere, apart. She hadn’t been terribly surprised to see the harpies; something in her, some buried, cellular memory, seemed to recognize them.

Some of the men were drinking the last of the liquor in the pub; they were fools, for alcohol only made people dehydrated, made them want more water. She lived only a block from the pub and she could hear the noise of their carousing—the carousing of despair—even at this distance. Someone threw a bottle through a window with a tinkling crash.

How soon before one of those drunks came after her? She’d already had to block the front doors and windows of her cottage at night with furniture and boards. Someone had tried to break in twice the night before. She’d called out to them, demanded to know who they were, and two male voices only giggled in response, but at last they went away.

The village was falling apart physically and socially, which was understandable. Someone was taken every day, sometimes two or three, taken to an unknown fate. When they’d all watched the vicar lifted into that crack in the sky, the heart had gone out of them. No one was safe.

She sighed, and tried to envision Bosky and Garth, to get some sense of where they were, what was happening to them. She closed her eyes and turned her attention to her heart, and caught a flickering image of Bosky moving down a tunnel, rifle in hand . . .