pocket of a capsized drunk? Or had it been more recent wrongdoing, such as creeping into Seth Hazelton's barn and later cutting the man's face with a tin lantern. Yes, that might be it. Well, he would be here to greet that lover of mares when Hazelton arrived, and by that time Matthew hoped to have built up some seniority in this den of lawyers.
The pain was now excruciating, and Matthew clenched his teeth but he felt the cry rising up from his parched throat. He couldn't restrain it. He was going to have to scream, and what would the company of diaboliques then think of bis fortitude?
His mouth opened, and he let loose not a scream but a dry, rattling whisper. Even so, it was enough to further drain him. He was aware that the murmuring had ceased.
A hand—so rough-fleshed it might have been covered with treebark—touched his face, the fingers starting at his chin and sliding up his right cheek. The singsong murmuring began once more, still in that undecipherable language. What felt like a thumb and finger went to his right eye, and endeavored to push the lid up.
Matthew had had enough of this blindness. He gave a soft gasp at the effort it involved, but he forced his eyes open of his own accord.
Immediately he wished he had not. In the red, leaping light and drifting smoke of Hades, the visage of a true demon greeted him.
This creature had a narrow, long-chinned brown face with small black eyes, its flesh wrinkled and weathered like ancient wood. Blue whorls decorated the gaunt cheeks, and a third eye— daubed bright yellow as the sun—was painted in the center of the forehead. The earlobes were pierced with hooks from which dangled acorns and snail shells. The head was bald save for a topknot of long gray hair that grew from the back of the scalp and was adorned with green leaves and the bones of small animals.
To make Matthew's induction to Hell even worse, the demon opened its mouth and displayed a set of teeth that might have served as a sawblade. 'Ayo pokapa, ' the creature said, nodding. Or at least that was the sound Matthew heard. 'Ayo pokapa, ' the demon spoke again, and lifted to its lips half of a broken clay dish in which something was densely smoking. With a quick inhalation, the creature pulled smoke into its mouth and then blew the noxious fumes-—that nasty demon's-sweat odor—into Matthew's nostrils.
Matthew attempted to turn his head aside, and that was when he realized his skull was bound in some way to whatever hard pallet he lay upon. Avoiding the smoke was impossible.
'Yante te napha te, ' the creature began to murmur. 'Saba yante napha te.' It slowly rocked back and forth, eyes half-closed. The light from one or more hellfires glowed red through the dense pall of smoke that drifted above Matthew. What sounded like a pineknot burst, and then there came a hissing noise like a roomful of rattlesnakes from beyond the murmuring, rocking di-abolist. The acrid woodsmoke seemed to thicken, and Matthew feared that the little breath he could grasp would soon be poisoned. 'Yante te napha te, saba yante napha te, ' went the repeated, rising and falling voice. Again the ritual with the broken dish and the inhalation was repeated, and again the smoke— damn Hell, if there was such a powerful stink to be smelled for eternity!—was blown up Matthew's nostrils.
He couldn't move, and assumed that not only his head was bound down but also both wrists and ankles. He wished to be a man about this, but tears sprang to his eyes.
'Ai!' the demon said, and patted his cheek. 'Mouk takani soba se ha ha.' Then it was back to the steady murmuring and rocking, and another blast of smoke up the nose.
After a half-dozen draughts, Matthew was feeling no pain. The cogwheels that usually regulated the order of his mind had lost their timing, and one rocking motion by the demon stretched to the speed of the snails whose shells hung from the earlobe hooks, while the next was gone past in an eyeblink. Matthew felt as if he were floating in a red-flamed, smoky void, though he could of course sense the hard pallet at his back.
And then Matthew knew he must be truly insane, for he suddenly realized something very strange about the piece of broken dish from which the murmuring, smoke-blowing creature was inhaling.
It was white. And on it was a decoration of small red hearts.
Yes, he was insane now. Absolutely insane, and ready for Hell's Bedlam. For that was the same dish Lucretia Vaughan had thrown into the fount, only then it had been whole and contained a sweet yam pie.
'Yante te napha te, ' the demon crooned, 'saba yante napha te.'
Matthew was fading again. Losing himself to the swelling dark. Reality—such as it was in the Land of Chaos —disappeared in bits and pieces, as if the darkness were a living thing that hungered first for sound, then light, and then smell.
If it was possible to die a death in the country of the dead, then that was Matthew's accomplishment.
But he found that such a death was fleeting, and there was very little peace in it. The pain grew again, and again ebbed. He opened his eyes, saw moving, blurred figures or shadows, and closed them for fear of what had arrived to visit him. He thought he slept, or died, or suffered nightmares of Jack One Eye running him down in a bloody clearing while the ratcatcher rode the bear's back and thrust at him with the five-bladed sticker. He awakened sweating summer floods, and fell to sleep again dry as a winter leaf.
The smoke-breathing demon returned, to continue its tortures. Matthew once more saw that the broken dish was white, with small red hearts. He dared to speak to the creature, in a feeble and fearful voice, 'Who are you?' The murmured chant went on.
'What are you?' Matthew asked. But no answer was given.
He slept and waked, slept and waked. Time had no meaning. He was tended to by two more demons, these more in the female shape with long black hair similarly adorned by leaves and bones. They lifted the mat of woven grasses, moss, feathers, and such that covered his nakedness, cleaned him when he needed to be cleaned, fed him a gray paste-like food that tasted strongly of fish, and put a wooden ladle of water to his lips.
Fire and smoke. Shifting shadows in the gloom. That murmured, singsong chanting. Yes, this was surely Hell, Matthew thought.
And then came the moment when he opened his eyes and found Rachel standing beside him in this realm of flames and fumes. 'Rachel!' he whispered. 'You too? Oh... my God... the bear...'
She said nothing, but pressed a finger to her lips. Though dead, her eyes were as bright as gold coins. Her hair cascaded in ebony waves about her shoulders, and Matthew would have been lying if he'd said the infernal light didn't make her heart-achingly beautiful. She was wearing a dark green shift decorated around the neck with intricate blue beadwork. He stared at the pulse that beat in the hollow of her throat, and saw moisture glisten on her cheeks and forehead.
It must be said, these demons did excellent work at the illusion of life.
He tried to angle his face toward her, but still his head was confined as were his arms and legs. 'Rachel... I'm sorry, ' he whispered. 'You shouldn't be here. Your time in Hell... was already served on earth.'
Her finger went to his lips, to bid him be silent.
'Can you ever... ever forgive me?' he asked. 'For bringing you to... such a bad end?' Smoke drifted between them, and somewhere beyond Rachel the fires crackled and seethed.
She gave him an eloquent answer. Leaning down, she pressed her lips to his own. The kiss lingered, and became needful.
His body—the illusion of a body, after all—reacted to this kiss as it would have done in the earthly sphere. Which didn't surprise Matthew, for it was a well-known fact Heaven would be full of angelic lutes and Hell full of flesh flutes. In that particular regard, perhaps it was not such a disagreeable place.
Rachel pulled back. Her face remained within his field of vision, her lips damp. Her eyes were shining, and the fire shadows licked her cheek.
She reached back and undid something. Suddenly the blue-beaded garment slipped off her and fell to the ground.
Her hands returned, lifting the woven mat from Matthew's body. Then she stepped up onto what must be a platform of some kind and slowly, gently eased her naked body down against his own, after which she pulled the grass mat over them again and kissed his mouth with longing.
He wanted to ask her if she knew what she was doing. He wanted to ask her if this was love, or passion, or if she looked at him and saw Daniel's face.
But he didn't. Instead, he surrendered to the moment; to be more accurate, the moment demanded him. He returned her kiss with a soul-deep longing of his own, and her body pressed against his with undeniable urgency.
