Prospero Regained (60 page)

So that was what the
Book of the Sibyl
meant by:
Where the Sibyl looks, love flows
!

And that was what flowed from my forehead: Love! A hundred things I had read about Sibyls over the years, a thousand subtle references, all came together and made sense at last. This energy, this invisible, liquid light, was Eurynome! Or rather Her spirit, Her love, flowing forth at the Sibyl’s bidding. It drew from the endless reservoir of Her heart—a never-ending stream of joy upon which a Sibyl could call, assuming she could maintain the right state of mind. It was the very stuff of which souls were made.

I had to keep my heart filled with joy for this to occur. If I started thinking about mundane things, the beam diminished, and flowers ceased springing up. On the other hand, the more I loved, the more I thought about joy, and gratitude, the wider the beam and the more quickly the blooms spread.

I knelt there, laughing and spelling out words in wildflowers by tracing letters along the bare ice: “Truth,” “Joy,” and “Astreus Stormwind,” which I wrote in long looping letters much like his own handwriting from my copy of the
Book of the Sibyl
.

Blushing, I quickly blotted out the last by glancing rapidly back and forth, until new blooms sprang up over the whole area.

The wonder of it—to be able to bring life out of nothingness, even in Hell—awed me. Despite having yearned for this for centuries, I could hardly believe such a gift had been granted to me.

In the distance, a minotaur cavorted among the flowers. Beyond that lay the fallen Tower of Thorns. Summoning up all the love and joy I could muster, I focused the white beam on its dreadful thorns.

They did not hurt my eyes. The entire length of the tower that had once so terrified me burst into brilliant red roses.

When Ulysses found me, I was laughing, surrounded by flowers.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

Seir of the Shadows

Ulysses and I appeared amidst a sea of arms, all reaching for the
Staff of Transportation.
Somewhere in the mass of family, I caught sight of Mab. With a quick gesture, I pulled out the pins that held my hair up. Shaking my tresses over my face, I grabbed Mab and drew him over beside me.

“Psst,” I whispered. “Can I borrow your hat?”

Mab gave me a long odd stare, but he handed the fedora over without a word. I put it on, pulling it low, so that it covered the mark. It was too much to talk about right now, too much to explain.

There would be time enough to share this with my family once we were all safely home.

“Ready?” Father called. “Let’s go!”

Ulysses tapped his staff. A moment later, I was sinking into the Swamp of Uncleanness. The great adamant structure of the Gate of False Dreams towered over us.

“Sorry,” Ulysses called cheerfully. “Forgot about this. This happened last time, too, and when I was fleeing Abaddon. Really gave me the heebie-jeebies, because I thought, having renounced hope and all that, I could never get out, but it’s really all right. We just have to walk through the gate on foot, and we can teleport again on the far side.… Oops!”

“Oops?” asked Logistilla. “Oops, what?”

A rising sense of panic threatened to consume me. Before I had sunk very far, however, Titus picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. Holding me began to affect him, and he began to sink as well.

“Hurry, ye wee man!” Titus boomed. “Get us out of here!”

“Can’t!” Ulysses called back. “The gate is locked! It was locked when I tried to bug out during the battle with Abaddon, too, but I forgot about it. Or rather, I thought it might be open again, because Mephisto was able to summon his creatures.”

“Can’t you go around?” Erasmus asked. He looked pale. His face had been raked by thorns and was now marred by bloody scratches.

“No good. My staff doesn’t work that way.”

Theo’s voice boomed from behind us. “Here, allow me.”

Stepping forward, he drew out a long golden key from beneath his breastplate. “Abaddon dropped this when I blasted him. I thought it might come in handy.”

So that was what he had been carrying all this time. He inserted the golden key into the keyhole. The giant black door slowly swung open. Immediately, Titus charged forward, carrying us both successfully through the gate, and I found myself in the vast, dark, mist-filled cavern of Limbo.

Erasmus limped forward. He looked tired but happy. He put his hand on my shoulder. Then, to my utter shock, he laughed and threw both arms around me, hugging me.

“I owe you my life,” he whispered in my ear. “You are a better man than I—human, or whatever it is you are.” He ran a hand through my wings, producing an odd ripple of pressure on my shoulder blades. “Thank you.”

I squeezed him back. It felt weird, but there was no familiar rush of animosity, such as I had felt in the days before we destroyed Antonio’s spell. In fact, now that I had forgiven him, he seemed quite different: part wise, part foolish, and rather dear.

The others filed through behind us. I turned to greet them, smiling, and was surprised by their long faces and the lack of bounce in their step. Why were they not celebrating?

“It was that Cavalier hat, Ma’am,” Mab said sadly. “Should have warned him not to put it on until we were safely outside.”

“Until who was safely outside? What are you talking about, Mab?”

“We lost Mephisto,” Father replied, he leaned upon his staff, from which leaves and flowers grew. His face looked lined and worn. “Lilith had some hold on his soul. She pointed her finger, and the ground gaped beneath his feet.” He shook his head in disgust. “All this effort, and there has been no net gain. We are still down one member. Let us go home and lick our wounds. Perhaps, with time and contemplation, we can discover a way to save my wayward son.”

The mists of Limbo blew a pack of whirling souls against us. One passed through Ulysses, who screamed and disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the rest of us stranded in Limbo.

“Oh, that boy!” Father growled, shaking his head.

“I knew we should have marked the hole that led to that crate!” Logistilla wailed.

In the midst of this confusion, someone touched me on the shoulder. Turning, I found myself looking into a black sable face framing blood red eyes.

“I came to say one last goodbye,” his golden-tongued voice whispered, “unless you wish to stay and come with me to my nest of love where we can bask in the carnality of our passion forevermore?”

Standing so close, I could not help but notice again how extraordinarily handsome he was. His intoxicating demon-scent wafted my way, and a tingling began in my forehead. Closing my eyes, I pictured the beam coming from my forehead touching the place from which the tingle seemed to originate. The tingling stopped, and I remained unaffected by the incubus’s proximity.

I nearly laughed aloud. Apparently, the incubus’s effect counted as a “poison.” By removing his noxious influence, I had successfully used another of the Gifts of the Sibyl. Behind me, I heard Mab and Cornelius sniffing the air; apparently they had caught a whiff of the heavenly scent. Luckily, they did not glance this way. Seir himself seemed disturbed. He looked about in wary puzzlement.

“Lilith has stolen Mephisto,” I whispered. “Can you bring him back?”

His eyes went a dull red, the color of dried blood. “Have I not done enough for Mephistopheles?”

My heart beat so loudly I feared my family would hear it. His eyes had changed color! Seir’s eyes never changed; they had always been that same unchanging, bloody crimson. Could my dream have been true? Had the incubus really called up Astreus, only to be unable to put him down again?

“It’s you!” I whispered in spite of myself.

He laughed. “And why do you think that? Because I sent you a false dream, and you believed it? No, he is dead. Deader than dead.”

I frowned. Now, that seemed odd. Why would an incubus try to
decrease
my trust in him? Why would he mock me? That did not even sound like an incubus talking.

It sounded like an elf.

A cold terror laid a single silencing finger upon my heart. No! I was not going to walk down that path! I was not going to risk my heart, or my family, again. From my point of view, Astreus was dead and gone, no matter what this womanizing shadow might say.

A high-pitched
whir
sounded from over my left shoulder. Seir’s eyes widened, and he vanished.

“Incubus!” Theo’s voice barked out. My family immediately came to attention, staffs in hand, and began surveying the area warily.

I, meanwhile, stood stock still and trembled. If only I had not lost the crown, or we still had Mephisto’s hat! If Astreus was in there at all, even as a ghost or a memory, I might have been able to convince him to make Seir rescue Mephisto.

I did not have the crown, but I did have something else.

Kneeling, I drew the figurine of Astreus that Mab had returned to me from my pocket and placed it on the ground.

With a second flash of light, Ulysses returned from wherever he had fled to, looking sheepish. “Sorry, folks, reflexes. Shall we tootle-loo along?”

“Let us depart! Immediately!” Father commanded striding toward Ulysses and grabbing his staff before my brother could flee again. “Any additional efforts to save Mephisto can be done from the safety of a landscape fit for mankind!”

The others grabbed hands. I did not rise.

“Ulysses, can you come back for me?” I asked. “I have an idea.”

“Are you crazy?” Theo burst out, waving his hands. “Do you think we’re going to abandon you in Hell the moment after that incubus tried to attack you?”

“I might—just might—be able to save Mephisto.”

“I’m staying with you,” Theo announced immediately.

“And I,” said Titus.

“And me,” said Mab.

“Me, too,” offered Caliban.

“I as well,” Gregor leaned upon the
Y
atop the
Staff of Silence
.

“And, I, I suppose,” Erasmus said with a sigh. He could barely stand upright; he was still a mass of cuts, and his eyes were not quite focused. “I’m not really feeling my best, but it would be unsporting of me to leave now.”

“Oh, pooh!” Logistilla stamped her foot. “Now we all have to stay, or we’ll look like boobs.”

“I will stay if someone will lead me in the right direction,” Cornelius said. He stood with his hand on Erasmus’s shoulder, and he was smiling.

Father’s bushy eyebrows drew together but he did not object. He kept a hand on Ulysses’s staff, though.

“Can’t it wait?” Father asked. “I will remind you that there is a storm brewing.”

My heart skipped a beat. I had forgotten about that. My family needed to rush back immediately to stop the Aerie Ones I had freed. I should wait, as Father suggested.

On the other hand, the window of time during which any remnant of Astreus might remain awake in Seir might be quite short. If I called him later, would he recall at all? I would have to trust that my mother and the angels could mitigate the damage a little longer.

“No. It can’t wait.” I frowned. “I appreciate the support, but really, the rest of you should rush back.”

My siblings, to the man, shook their heads.

I sighed. “Very well, but if you are going to stay, you all have to stand together in a ward. And no shooting at the incubus when I call him up.”

“Call him up?” Theo cried. “Do you mean Seir of the Shadows? The same tricky demon who hunted me for twelve years and tricked you into thinking he was Ferdinand?”

My head hurt. This was never going to work. All that elf-talk was certainly a trick as well.

Yet, why would the incubus mock me for trusting him. He had come as himself. He had not been pretending to be Astreus. It made no sense.

I stood up and turned on my brother. “Theo, are you going to trust me or not?”

Theo looked taken aback.

Erasmus lay a calming hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Bro, just this once—just as a lark—why don’t we all try trusting Miranda, hmm?”

“Er … right.” Theo lowered his staff, whether because he agreed or because of the sheer irony of having Erasmus defend me against him, I did not know.

“Mab, draw a ward around everyone else, would you?” I knelt again and put my finger on the head of the figurine. Behind me, I heard Mab shuffling around, pouring out salt and the like that he had pulled from yet more of his ubiquitous pockets.

“All ready, Ma’am,” he said finally.

My stomach churned. I tapped the figurine upon the head. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, Seir of the Shadows was standing before me, his tattered opera cape swirling about in the mists of Limbo.

Before I could so much as rise, there came a
whirring
hum from behind my back. Seir vanished again.

“Theo!”

“Sorry,” my brother grumbled, shouldering his staff. “Habit.”

I tapped the figurine again and stood.

Seir appeared again, gazing at my family warily.

“Don’t go!” I called.

“Ah, an invitation from a maid? For that I will brave any danger.”

I closed my eyes briefly, using my mark to dispel all the oogly incubus tingles.

“I want a favor.” I touched his shoulder. He stared at my hand, as if mesmerized.

“You know what I want in return,” he replied with honeyed words. “I want to carry you off to my love nest near the stars and pay my respects to your luscious sweet body until you grow faint from passion. I want us to become one and never to be parted. I want you!”

“I thought you might like something else.” I whipped off Mab’s hat and pushed my hair aside. My family currently stood behind me; only Seir could see the mark of my Lady’s favor.

The incubus’s eyes grew wide indeed. It may have been a trick of the light, but for an instant, it seemed as if his whole body had lost some of its sable darkness, becoming a papery gray. But then that instant was over, and he was the same as ever.

“Darling Miranda,” Seir cooed. “Long have I desired to have you as my own, but that joy will be nothing to the pleasure and riches Lilith shall shower upon me when I deliver you to her now.”