Читать книгу Reforming Hell - Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen - Страница 6

CHAPTER 3

Surprising Lucifer

Lucifer first heard the distorted version of Eve and Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eliom, a dimensional world parallel to Earth but not on that planet, and his role in it as the serpent that corrupted Eve, almost 30,000 years before this night. This story of Earth’s first man and woman, of the snake tempting the woman to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the woman beguiling her husband to taste the forbidden fruit, both intrigued and infuriated Lucifer.

The tree, its fruit and the snake were pure fantasy, merely symbols masking the ultimate truth.

But mortals repeated the tale through the ages as their hearth fires cast shadow and light on the walls of their caves and huts. They added the tale of Cain and Abel, also distorted, for the twins had not been Eve’s first-born, and certainly not Adam’s get. Adam had raised them after Eve’s mortal death, causing the confusion over their parentage. Cwuh had sired them on her.

Lucifer had long ago ceased to be mystified by humanity’s need for its religious symbols, although it still amazed him when they took their symbols at face value, as gospel.

Lucifer’s rebellion, neither cold-blooded, nor furtive, had been passionate and honest. He sneered at the hidden sexuality in the image of the snake tempting Eve. He and Eve had been dear friends. He had never seduced her or cuckolded her husband Michael, once loved like a brother. Lucifer, before he fell from Heaven, had been faithful to his wife, Affaeteres.

Five thousand years after conquering the astral wilderness of Hell and building his kingdom, Lucifer heard the first mortal chants of the Garden, naming him the serpent within it. The reptile was maligned on Earth, despite having no greater or lesser need to survive than any of Earth’s other creatures. Lucifer decreed that all snakes in his kingdom were to be treated with respect, for there were snakes and other animals in Hell. Hell had evolved like any other world in the Creator’s universe. Snakes were native to Hell, Earth and Heaven.

But he would not abide any artistic depiction of the limbless creature in his kingdom and banned the snake’s image and his association with it.

Hell’s artists grumbled over Lucifer’s proclamation, but none dared defy it. His throne room where he now sat, awaiting his eldest sons whom he had summoned, held many fantastic images but contrary to the paintings of many mortal artists, nothing serpentine. He had decorated it with images and symbols of his fall from his lost homeland, Eliom.

The right arm of his marble throne, as it faced the vast hall from the smooth, black granite dais, flowed into an eagle at rest, its eyes glaring and its beak opened threateningly, as if daring any to disturb it. The left arm segued into a crouching wolf, ears flattened and teeth snarling. The tall back of the throne held, on Lucifer’s right, the standing profile of a proud, bull oxen, its tail at the end, its bovine head toward the center, turning to gaze coldly at those who stood before the dais. To its left, padding toward the oxen as if the beasts might meet in the middle, a powerful lion also turned its head to face those Lucifer surveyed from his throne, both the willing and the unwilling, its countenance harsh.

The throne sculptures represented the four Seraphim who disgraced Lucifer during Eve’s trial and after it in Eliom, a reminder of his vow to one day face them again and win their atonement.

Lucifer savored the grandeur about him. Six, thick, marble, gold-veined pillars, three on each side of the central reception floor, rose up to support left and right balconies. A palace guard stood before each pillar, dressed in the manner of Roman soldiers in the reign of Tiberius, Lucifer’s elite. Six more guards stood rigidly at attention: two before the elaborately carved, gold and jewel-encrusted, central throne room doors, two unseen from the throne at smaller entrances under the balconies, and two more stationed at private doors that led to and from the dais.

Below the balconies were the galleries, open areas with shadowed recesses, once lit by lamps filled with sweet oil, now replaced with softly glowing electrical light fixtures jutting from the wide, wooden, balcony support beams. Displayed upon the gallery walls, extraordinary paintings, ten feet in height and width, portrayed the long ago expulsion of Lucifer and those he championed from Eliom, their struggle to survive in Hell, and their triumphant conquest and taming of its wilderness.

Lucifer leaned forward on his throne, fingering the hard sculpted fur of the stone wolf impatiently. He stood up and strode abruptly down the three wide steps, descending the dais, and briskly over to the first painting adorning the left-hand wall. In it, rebel angels captured by the winged Seraphim were lifted into the roiling cloud above the village green in Eliom, where Lucifer had earlier argued heatedly against the incarnation of the angelfolk on Earth. The complaisant angelfolk were shown in a wide circle around the green, separated from the disobedient angels by an energy field. Only one of the obedient dared to breech it: Leianna. The artist had lovingly painted the lethal sparks that flew about her, igniting her hair, robe and body as she blindly strove to break through its barrier. She had not reached Bael. The electrical charge threw her violently back; she’d been nursed back to health by her family and her spirit master, Quatama.

“Father.”

Lucifer didn’t turn. “You know, Bael, it’s a wonder that electricity didn’t maim her for life despite the healing ability of the angelfolk. If she had been hideously disfigured, would you still love her? I mean immortally, regardless of how prettily any mortal life might paint her.”

Bael remained silent.

Lucifer slowly pivoted, facing him. “And where is your elder brother?”

Bael regarded him somberly, almost rudely, to Lucifer’s think­ing. He was dressed, as usual, all in black, in a long-sleeved turtleneck sweater, jeans and boots, matching his ebony hair and eyes, in contrast to his ruddy golden complexion.

“Well?”

“To answer your first question, I would still love Leianna. It might lessen my pleasure a bit when we made love.”

“So this love, after all these centuries, is more than just a need for closure, to finish an interrupted passion and let it run its course? Do you intend to marry her?”

“I believe the betrothal has stood the test of time.”

Lucifer nodded. “And where is Ashtoreth? I sent for him also.”

“Ashtoreth is not in Hell tonight.” Lucifer waited, and Bael obliged him. “He is on the upper planes, consulting with Quatama.”

“The great Gautama Buddha, championing Leianna, your bro­ther and you in this fairy tale quest. You would think that the current behavior of humankind would prove my point and end this reformation folly.”

“The Alliance may—possibly—improve mankind’s be­hav­ior.” Bael spoke haltingly, as if trying to convince himself as well as Lucifer.

Lucifer raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “Bael, I don’t believe souls damned to Hell will ever be redeemable, not even with one-third of Earth’s humanity being incarnated angelfolk and the rest carrying some measure of angelic DNA, thanks to the Creator’s great rebreeding experiment, going on now for what . . . nearly 35 millennia?”

“Nearly that. And most mortals know little to nothing about the angelic incarnations. But I bring other news Quatama conveyed to us. The old ones, the elders who left Eliom on the eve of Leianna’s immortal birth, are due to return to our sector of the universe at the start of the 21st Century. He believes they will influence the goals of the Alliance.”

His son’s eyes met his deliberately then broke contact, but Lucifer continued to gape at him, as if Bael had delivered a blow, stunning him. He forced himself to swallow, to draw air into his lungs, then found his voice: “You’ve trumped me! Do you know who was among those elders trusting our Creator to send them light-years away to help with some newly sentient species on some unknown planet? Do you know who was taken from me and from your mother with no knowledge as to where they’d gone or when they might return? You were barely a year old, but I later told you of it. But I demanded to all who were told, that they never again mention my loss. Perhaps you’ve forgotten in the passage of centuries exactly who we lost.”

“Your parents and Mother’s parents. Your father Othorath. Your mother Ise. My paternal grandparents. And my mother’s mother, Venea. And her father Mercurius. My maternal grandparents. And Leianna’s paternal grandparents, Zoras and Heira. And you only became bitter, questioning the Creator’s ability to safeguard them, after we were exiled into Hell.”

Lucifer nodded. “And when they do return, what will they find? Eliom changed, its people scattered, their own kin lost to them in Hell!”

“Father, they willingly took on the task set for them by the Creator.”

“And I didn’t.” Lucifer paced, agitated. “My and Affaeteres’s parents will find us banned from Eliom—or whatever damned name it goes by now, their son disgraced and their daughter de­stroyed by this dark realm.” And by me, he thought, and for love of me. “And what will you and your brother Ashtoreth, who are permitted where I may not trespass, tell them?”

“Heaven has placed rules and restrictions on Ashtoreth and me, Father.”

“Dammit, answer my question!”

“I . . . I would ask that they be permitted to visit you,” Bael said, his voice raising, “if you would explore a potential alliance, a long-awaited chance to heal the ostracism we’ve suffered, no longer rebels, but leaders negotiating for our realm’s future!”

“Ah! But could I visit Heaven?”

Bael hesitated, staring at him. “Possibly. In time.”

Lucifer sucked in air and expelled it, teeth gritted, lips twisting. “So you dangle a carrot before me, thinking me some old goat you can lead forward to your own ends!”

“Father,” Bael murmured, but Lucifer could feel the anger smol­dering behind Bael’s quiet reproof, its sparks ready to erupt into bitter flames.

They had fought before. Bael never shied from speaking out; he would never play the role of sycophant to anyone. But a sudden, overwhelming need, to see a burden, too long carried, possibly lightened, prompted Lucifer’s next words, not the stubbornness of his second-in-command. He took the carrot but would somehow control the direction of this Alliance business. “Tell Quatama that he and Leianna may visit my realm and, at my insistence, dine with me and my family. I will guarantee them safe passage.”

Now Bael gaped.

Lucifer shot him a mocking glance. “I would question Quatama myself about our elders’ return. That is why and only why you’ve won this small victory. And I make no promises beyond it.”

“When, then?”

“On the next Sabbath.” Lucifer turned from him, walking to the private door to the right of the dais, his voice loud in the high-vaulted room. “One A.M., Saturday, as time is measured in your lady’s mortal world. Thus I even accommodate her.” His guard opened the door as he approached. “To meet my adversary on the Sabbath suits my humor.”

He went to his chambers, leaving Bael to carry the news to Heaven that the goat had snapped at the bait.