The dark shape stood up abruptly, and huffed and puffed itself up into a great hulking figure, taking up half the cavern, buzzing almost painfully loudly. It tried to pick up Madman with one huge black hand, but the flies just slipped harmlessly past him. The demon hesitated a moment and thrust a hand in my direction. The fingers extended, becoming shafts of flies rushing towards my face. They swept over me, trying to force their way into my mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. I panicked, flapping my hands wildly about my head while pressing my lips and eyelids firmly together, as the flies crawled over my face. And then to my astonishment they all leapt off me and retreated, apparently repulsed. The demon froze where it was, seemingly just as astonished as I was, and I seized the moment to summon up my gift. My inner eye snapped open, and it only took a moment for me to find and identify the Words of Power that bound the demon to this place.
(And yet even as I used my gift, some instinct made me slam my inner eye shut again, the moment it was no longer needed. While my mind was open and vulnerable, I sensed Something awful closing in on me, trying to pin down my location so it could manifest. My enemies had found something worse than the Harrowing to send after me, and all my instincts screamed that if I were to use my gift one instant longer than necessary, this new horror would find me and carry out its makers' terrible intent.)
I said the Words of Power. They arose from no human tongue, or even human sounds, and just to hear them said aloud would reduce most men to madness. I said the Words, slowly but distinctly, forcing them out syllable by syllable, and the terrible sound of them reverberated in my skull until I thought they'd blow my head apart. The demon screamed in thwarted rage, then was gone, taking with him his meat throne and his butcher's tools. All that remained was the sullen red glare, and the names of his victims traced on the cavern walls in their own blood.
Pretty Poison looked at me, taken aback. 'How is it that you were able to speak those Words? The sheer power involved should have blasted the soul right out of your body.'
'I have hidden depths,' I said. My throat hurt. Where the meat throne had stood, there was now an opening in the cavern wall. 'And so, it seems, has this place.'
We all moved cautiously forward to study the new opening. It was shaped like a door, with smooth sides and top, but that was all there was to it. No warning signs, no welcome mat. Beyond the opening lay a long, descending stairway, carved into the rock face of a vast open space. Hovering lights marked the stairs here and there, but their pale light did little more than show just how far down the steps went. It looked like a hell of a long way. There was no railing, nothing between the open edge of the steps and an impossibly long drop. I started down the steps, one shoulder pressed firmly against the rock face, and after a moment the others followed me. We descended into the dark abyss, step by step, for a very long time.
'Are we there yet?' said Madman.
'Shut up,' I said.
'Are we even still under the Nightside?' said Sinner. 'We do seem to have travelled rather a long way.'
'We haven't left the Nightside, sweetie,' Pretty Poison assured him. 'I'd know.'
'We are in the dark places of the earth,' said Madman. 'Where all the ancient and most dangerous secrets are kept. There are Old Things down here, sleeping all around us, in the earth and in the living rock, and in the spaces between spaces. Keep your voices down. Some of these old creatures sleep but lightly, and even their dreams can have force and substance in our limited world. We have come among forgotten gods and sleeping devils, from the days before the world settled down and declared itself sane.'
'I think I liked it better when you made no sense at all,' said Sinner.
The hovering lights turned out to be paper lanterns, nailed to the rock face at regular intervals. Their tightly stretched sides were made up of silently screaming faces. The eyes in the agonised faces turned to watch us as we passed.
'Are they still alive?' I said. 'Still suffering?'
'Oh yes,' said Pretty Poison, her voice heavy with a certain satisfaction.
'Hush,' said Sinner.
'But what are they?' I said. 'Who were they?'
'Uninvited guests,' said Madman, and after that no-one felt like talking for a while.
We descended further and further into the earth. The stairs wound around the curving wall of the vast abyss. The dark rock of the wall showed clear signs of having been worked on long ago, at first by tools but later by what seemed to be bare hands. Someone had fashioned this great gulf under the Nightside for a purpose, but who and why and when remained a mystery. Could men have done this, alone or with help? Why would they have wanted to? Was the Lord of Thorns really so dangerous that they had to bury him this deep in the earth? The deeper I went, the more scared I became. My hands were trembling, and my mouth was dry. This was all getting too big, too important for me. I wanted to go back to being just another private investigator, dazzling the natives with tricks and mind games, trading on a reputation I'd never really earned. But I had to go on. I'd come this far for the truth, and though I'd run out of courage and good sense, stubbornness kept me going.
The wall at my shoulder became increasingly pitted and corroded, and thin streams of liquid trickled down the dark stone. I stopped and studied the wet surface closely.
'Don't touch it,' said Sinner.
'I wasn't going to. What do you suppose this is? Acid rain, or the underground equivalent?'
'No,' said Pretty Poison. 'Tears.'
Sinner looked at her dubiously. 'You know this place?'
'Of it. All demons and angels are warned about this place. We are almost at the domain of the Lord of Thorns, the Overseer of the Nightside.'
'The Overseer?' I said. 'Does that mean he's the one behind the Authorities?'
'No,' said Pretty Poison. 'He's much more powerful than that. He sits in judgement, and mercy and compassion are not allowed to him.'
'I want to go home,' said Madman.
'Most sensible thing you've said all day,' said Sinner.
The stairs finally curved around a corner and came to an end, facing a great and elegant chamber carved out of crystal. A pleasant, comfortable light appeared suddenly overhead, bursting out of one crystal facet after another, until the whole chamber was bright as day, like standing in the heart of a huge diamond. In the centre of the crystal cave was a single raised slab of polished stone, and on that slab, sleeping peacefully, a man. He didn't look particularly dangerous, with his grey hair and grey robes, and a calm face apparently untroubled by care. We all filed into the shining chamber, looking uncertainly about us. I think we'd all been expecting more guardians, more defences, but everything was still and quiet. Like the eye of the storm.
Etched into every crystal facet were characters from the language known as Enochian, a tongue created for men to speak to angels. I recognised it, but I couldn't read it. Not many can. It is corrosive to rational thinking. Pretty Poison moved along one wall, tracing the characters with a fingertip.
'These are names,' she said softly. 'Names beyond number, of angels from Above and Below, from all ranks and stations ... Even ray name is here. My true name, from before the Fall. No mortal should have access to this knowledge...'
'But... why write them here?' said Sinner.
'Because to know the true name of a thing is to have power over it,' said Pretty Poison. 'To command and to control. Whoever put the Lord of Thorns here, and made him Overseer of the Nightside, has given him power over all the agents of Heaven and Hell.'
'No wonder he was ripping the wings off angels during the angel war,' said Sinner. 'But who could give him that kind of power?'
'Two possibilities come to mind,' said Madman.
'Shut up,' said Pretty Poison.
She sounded shocked, upset. I was concentrating on the man on the slab. He hadn't moved at all since we entered his domain. But I didn't think he was sleeping. Sleeping people usually breathe now and again. And then my heart missed a beat as he sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the slab, and sat facing us. We all froze where we were, caught in the gleam of his gaze, like burglars picked out by torchlight in a place they should never have entered. With his long grey robes, hair, and beard, the Lord of Thorns looked like nothing so much as an Old Testament prophet. The kind that told you the Flood was coming, and you'd left it far too late to book seats on the Ark. His face looked older than any man's should, and his eyes were fierce and wild and touched with a
