The Infernals (15 page)

c) a police car

d) a van filled with unknown little people.

She had also exhausted herself bringing them all here, and had fallen into unconsciousness for a time. When she woke, she found that she was unable to locate any of them, at least until the insufferable A. Bodkin had tried to send a message to his superiors, a message that she had intercepted. She now knew roughly the area in which at least some of those whom she had accidentally targeted might be, and by extension where she might find Samuel Johnson, but since this was Hell, which, as we have established, tended to play a little fast and loose with concepts such as direction and geography, it was like being told that a needle is almost certainly in a haystack, and then being shown a very large field filled with very large haystacks. Oh, and the field goes up and down as well as across for very long distances. And it’s a bit diagonal as well.

Therefore Mrs. Abernathy required help if she was to search for the boy, which was why she had decided against immediately torturing those who had earlier turned their backs on her. Instead she listened to their pleas and their excuses before dispatching them to seek out Samuel Johnson. For the most part they had nothing of interest to tell her anyway, but there were certain exceptions. One of those exceptions was standing before her now. Actually,
standing
might be too strong a word for what
it was doing, since it had technically oozed beneath her gaze and had now simply ceased oozing, although assorted substances still dripped from its pores in way that suggested further oozing could only be a matter of time. It resembled a transparent slug with aspirations to be something more interesting, hampered by the fact that it was, and always would be, made of gelatinous material and about three feet tall, and therefore only of interest to other things made of jelly and slightly smaller than itself. Two unblinking eyeballs were set into what was, for now, its front part, beneath which was a toothless mouth. It wore a black top hat, which it raised in greeting using a tentacle that slowly extruded from its body expressly for that purpose, and then was promptly reabsorbed.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” it said. “Happy to see you on the up again, as it were.”

“And you are?” said Mrs. Abernathy.

“Crudford, Esq., ma’am. I work in the Pits of Hopelessness. Don’t really fit in, though. Not the hopeless type. I’ve always been a hopeful sort of gelatinous mass, me. The glass is always half full, that’s what I say. When you’re made of jelly, and only have a hat to your name, it can only get better, can’t it?”

“Someone could take your hat,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

“Agreed, agreed, but it wasn’t my hat to begin with. I just found it, so technically that wouldn’t be much of a reversal, would it?”

“It would if I took it, forced you into it, then slowly roasted you, and it, over a large fire.”

Crudford considered this. “I’d still have my hat, though, wouldn’t I?”

Mrs. Abernathy decided that Crudford, Esq. might just have to be made an example of at some point in the near future, if only to discourage such a brightness of outlook in others.

“So what can you do for me until then?” said Mrs. Abernathy.

“Well, I can ooze. I’ve worked hard at it. Labored my way up from just dripping, through sliming, until I hit on a steady flow. You could say I’ve perfected it. But I appreciate that it’s a skill of limited applicability in most circumstances, if you catch my drift. Still, onward and upward.”

“Mr. Crudford, if I stood on you, would it hurt?”

“Yes. You’d get ooze on your shoe, though.”

“It’s a price I’m willing to pay, unless you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”

“Suppose I told you about Chancellor Ozymuth, ma’am, and how he’s been plotting against you,” said Crudford, and he was pleased to see Mrs. Abernathy’s expression of profound distaste change to one of mild distaste, coupled with a side order of interest.

“Continue.”

“As it happens, I was there the last time that you came to visit, when you were trying to see our master, the Great Malevolence. It’s one of the advantages of oozing, see: you can ooze just about anywhere, fitting into all kinds of small spaces, and nobody ever notices. Anyway, I was there, and I saw what happened after you’d gone.”

“Which was?”

“Someone emerged from the shadows, and it was Duke Abigor. He congratulated Chancellor Ozymuth on how well he
was doing in keeping you away from the Great Malevolence, and on telling our master what a bad sort you are. Completely unjustified, I hasten to add. I mean, you are a bad sort, but in the best possible way. Then Duke Abigor slipped away, and having nothing better to do than a bit more oozing, I followed him deep underground, until we came to a meeting room, and they were all there waiting for him.”

“Who was waiting?”

“Most of the Grand Dukes of Hell. They were sitting at a big table, and Duke Abigor joined them at the head of it. They started talking about you. Funny thing is, ma’am, they’re back there again now. Just thought you might like to know. I was hopeful about it, you might say …”

Duke Abigor looked very unimpressed, a not inconsiderable achievement given that his standard expression veered toward the unimpressed, even when he was impressed, which wasn’t very often.

“Tell me again,” he said as Duke Duscias quivered before him.

“She has found a way to reach out to the world of men,” said Duscias. “She pulled something from their world into ours, and now she seeks it.”

Duke Abigor was no fool. You didn’t end up with sixty legions of demons at your command by being a dolt. Duscias, on the other hand, was a fool, but he was Abigor’s fool, and so Duscias’s twenty-nine legions were, to all intents and purposes, also under Abigor’s command.

“It’s the boy,” said Abigor. “That is the only reason why she would risk opening up a portal without the knowledge of our master. If she has the boy, she can present him to the Great Malevolence for his amusement, and she will be back at his left hand. Our chance to rule will vanish, and she will move against us.”

“But how?” said Duscias. “She cannot know of our plot. We have kept ourselves well hidden.”

“Because, you idiot, someone will tell her. If she finds a way to worm herself back into our master’s trust, then demons will be falling over themselves to betray us if it increases their chances of a promotion.”

Other figures began to file into the meeting room, their heads hidden by great black hoods that they let fall to reveal their faces: Duke Guares, commander of thirty legions; Duke Docer, commander of thirty-six legions; Duke Peros, also commander of thirty-six legions; and Duke Borym, commander of twenty-six legions. These were the ringleaders, the ones who had staked their reputations, and a potential eternity of pain if they failed, on Duke Abigor’s ability to convince the Great Malevolence that he should take over from Mrs. Abernathy as the Commander of the Infernal Armies. The problem for all concerned was that Mrs. Abernathy had not technically been relieved of her post, since the Great Malevolence had simply refused to see her and was still lost in the madness of his grief. Therefore the dukes were engaged in an act of treason against not only their own general, but against the Great Malevolence himself.

“We should have arrested her long before now,” said Duke Docer, once the situation had been explained to him. “We left her in peace, and the result is that she has outmaneuvered us.”

“We couldn’t have arrested her,” said Duke Abigor with as much patience as he could muster. Duke Docer was a soldier, and without cunning. He had won every battle in which he had fought by charging forward and overwhelming his foes by sheer might, and now he spent most of his time looking for new foes so that he wouldn’t get bored, even if it meant alienating allies to do so.
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He wouldn’t have known a strategy if it bit him. “There are too many that we have not yet brought over to our side.”

“But the hordes of Hell have no love for her either,” said Duke Peros. “Most would be glad if she were gone.”

“They may not care for her, but they care as little for me,” said Duke Abigor. “They may fear her, and hate her, but she is a force that they know and understand. I am an unknown quantity, as are we all.”

“We are more than two hundred legions strong,” said Duke Docer. “That is all they need to know and understand.”

“It is not enough!” said Duke Abigor. “We will not go to war unless we are certain of victory, and we do not know which side the Great Malevolence will support once he emerges from his mourning. If we misstep, then we are in danger of being perceived as traitors, and I do not need to remind you what the punishment is for such a betrayal.”

At this the dukes were silent. They had all seen Cocytus, the great lake of ice far to the north in which traitors were kept frozen for eternity. If they were lucky, their heads might be permitted to protrude from the ice, but as traitors not only to the kingdom but also to their master, the Great Malevolence, it was more likely that they would be entirely immersed in the cold and darkness, not a fate any of them desired.

“But the Great Malevolence is…” Duke Guares searched for the right words, and settled on, “not well. He may never cease his mourning. What then? Do we let this kingdom that we have hewn from rock and fire fall into decay and strife?”

Duke Abigor eyed Duke Guares warily. Guares was almost as clever as Abigor, and Abigor sometimes wondered if Guares had already guessed Abigor’s larger plan. It was true that the Great Malevolence seemed lost to them, but Guares and the others hoped each day that he might recover what passed for his sanity and resume his rule over Hell. Only Abigor wanted the Great Malevolence to remain immersed in his sorrow and his anger. Moreover Abigor wanted that sorrow and anger to grow so much deeper that the Great Malevolence would descend into a fateful madness from which he would never emerge. This was why Abigor had enlisted Chancellor Ozymuth to their cause, for Ozymuth ensured that the Great Malevolence was cut off from all contact with other demons, and Ozymuth whispered in the Great Malevolence’s ear that all was lost, lost forever, and it was Mrs. Abernathy’s fault that this was so.

“We will track down the boy, Samuel Johnson, before she does,” said Duke Abigor. “We will find him, and we will lock
him away where no one will ever discover him, and deny all knowledge of his whereabouts. Her last hope of earning back her place at our master’s left hand will be gone, and we will be able to claim that she is no longer suited to command the Infernal Armies, and a temporary replacement should be appointed as a matter of urgency until our master has found his wits again. You will all put my name forward as the most suitable candidate, and our opponents will have no time to muster a response. If they try to do so, we will wipe them out.”

“And Mrs. Abernathy?” said Duke Guares.

Duke Abigor smiled, but such an unpleasant smile that he still looked like an unimpressed demon, albeit one who has just been presented with a head on a plate, and who really likes heads.

“Is she not a traitor? A traitor for failing to achieve the victory we sought in the world of men, a traitor for bringing the boy who caused our defeat to this realm,
our
realm, and then losing him? She will be tried, and found guilty. We will take her to Cocytus, and we will chain a rock around her neck, and we will throw her through the ice. Let her be frozen forever as a warning to those who would promise us new worlds, and then disappoint.”

Duke Abigor looked to his co-conspirators, and each of them in turn nodded his agreement. Then one by one they filed from the meeting room, Duke Abigor the last to leave, until all was quiet again.

The silence was disturbed by a soft
glop
.

“Beg pardon,” said Crudford. “I oozed.”

“Clean yourself up,” said Mrs. Abernathy. She had seen and heard everything, crouched behind a crack in the rock wall. The expression on her face was unreadable, but Crudford, who was sensitive to emotions, detected fear, and surprise, and disappointment.

And rage: pure, channeled, governed rage.

“Did I do well, ma’am?” asked Crudford.

“You did very well,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “For this, I’ll even find you a new hat.”

Crudford’s slimy features parted in a grin. A new hat: it was more than he had dared to hope for.

T
HE
W
ATCHER FOUND A
quiet cave, where it mulled over what Old Ram had said. Eventually it sought out Mrs. Abernathy, but when it tried to speak with her, it found her overwhelmed by the attentions of the returning demons as they crowded around her, anxious to make recompense for their lack of faith in her. Their words were a salve to her wounded vanity, and although the Watcher might have fought its way through the mass of stinking bodies in order to reach its mistress, it had not done so. In part this was because it could see the pleasure she derived as they prostrated themselves before her, but there was also a part of the Watcher that still wondered about the boy, and the wisdom of what Mrs. Abernathy had done in dragging him to Hell.

In addition, the news that the boy might have been found had almost driven from its mind the discovery of the burned
rubber on the plain; almost, but not quite, for the Watcher had spent the intervening period trying to identify the other smells it had picked up among the rocks, comparing them with the scent memory in its strange, alien brain. The Watcher was an entity apart, even among the many foul and demonic beings that inhabited the various strata of Hell. It had attached itself to what was now its mistress shortly after the formation of Hell itself, and the emergence of the oldest of the demons. No one could recall quite how the Watcher had come into being; its nature was a mystery to all. Not even Mrs. Abernathy herself truly understood it: she knew only that it obeyed her will, and when so many had turned their backs on her, only the Watcher had remained truly faithful.