Читать книгу Reforming Hell - Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen - Страница 7

CHAPTER 4

A Dinner Party in Hell

Bael had warned Leianna: “Don’t ever come down to Hell without me!”

As it turned out, she had never set foot on the lower planes comprising his kingdom, despite being tempted to seek him out and explore the Netherworld. Despite her protests, Quatama had tweaked her soul’s aura with some power that blocked her ability to even venture near the darker planes. Only tonight had he lifted that psychic block.

Now as a guest of Lucifer, she and Quatama were in Hell. Even so, Leianna still hadn’t even left the royal palace.

She leaned over the low stone balustrade that circled one-third of its highest tier. Bael had led her outside onto this balcony. Above and directly behind them, a round, lighted dome crowned the northwest corner. It cast shadow and light onto the yellow, white, beige and brown flagstone floor that they stood upon. Leianna welcomed the dome’s soft illumination; it chased away the murk of the Netherworld night.

Bael waved his hand toward the cityscape far below them: the buildings, shops, parks, and thoroughfares of the capital city of Tandour in Domain. “Here in Domain, our royal principality in Hell, and in the four other countries sharing this first level of Hell, the noble classes of Hell rule and play.”

“And their servants?” Her tone challenged him. The panorama below stretched past the city limits to open country with the lights of smaller cottages, roads, a large, round stadium, and further on, darkened fields and a distant mountain, barely discernible against the black velvet sky.

“There are other classes besides servants,” he answered with a half-smile. “We have industry, arts and sciences in this first level. Its citizens live here willingly. You could liken them to the freeborn citizens of ancient Rome. They, too, had emperors, some mad, some sane, but none like Lucifer, ruler of our Netherworld.”

“You don’t rule?”

He stared at her, as if deciphering the intent of her question, then returned his gaze to the panorama beyond the palace. “My brothers and I are royal princes, and we each share both responsibilities and power. Our word is considered law in most instances.”

“Except for what?”

Now his stare became probing.

“Why do you stare at me like that?”

“I’m trying to guess your reasons for asking these questions.”

“Why don’t you just ask me?”

His smile widened, flashing even teeth. He looked good, dressed all in black: pants, boots, long-sleeved shirt and wide cummerbund. Looking like some dashing pirate, his thick black hair framed his face, resting temptingly on his neck. He had removed the elegant black dinner jacket he wore, casually handing the jewel-encrusted garment to a hall guard before guiding Leianna out into the warm night and the tower balcony to show her Tandour. “Perhaps I enjoy your mysterious womanly ways.”

“I want no mysteries between us.”

“No secrets?”

“This is no game, Bael. I need to know what goes on around here, and how I’ll fit in.” Despite distant starlight in the night sky, Hell was a world endlessly gray and dark, not even a moon to cast silver light upon this dimension, never a sun to rise into its sky and shed rays of golden warmth. But Lucifer had tamed Hell and used its resources, and today, electric lights chased away its darkness.

Hell had a day, too, Bael told her, but its sky shone a dull, thick silver-gray, as if an encroaching storm was forever approaching. And Bael had joked there was sulfur with its repellent stench, just as the legends said, but only in the lower circles of Hell. No brimstone assaulted her nose here. “I wonder if I could ever fit in here.”

“You’d be a royal princess.” He paused. “I hear both fear and determination in your words. You’ll be an unusual addition to my family, but you mustn’t fear them.”

She turned away from the balustrade and from Bael. “Not even Lucifer?”

“Especially not him.”

“Why? Does he secretly admire me and want us to marry?”

He hesitated until Leianna turned back to him, glancing sharply up at him, and then he reached over and ran his fingers through her hair, lifting and separating one auburn strand. He stroked it between his fingers. “See how the light catches your hair, giving it a golden sheen. Fire and ice, and one does not douse or melt the other.” He lowered his hand. “No, Lucifer doesn’t want you back in my life. He’s never forgiven you for siding with the Creator. He’s hoping that you’ll screw up, that the millennia we’ve been apart have changed us.”

She pursed her lips, troubled. “I think that they have. Don’t you?”

“Yes, intensely so. But it seems some things don’t change.”

“My Lord,” the guard holding Bael’s dinner jacket interrupted them. “Your father requests that you and the Lady Leianna join him and the other dinner guests. They are about to sit down.” The man nodded to another guard, who walked briskly off, having delivered his message. Both were dressed in a perfect imitation of a Praetorian guard of old Rome. Perhaps there was some significance to Bael’s remark about Roman citizens, some parallel history. The guard now held out the jacket like a butler, helping Bael into it, then stood once again at attention at his post within the archway.

Leianna noticed that he held a spear, and a short sword was sheathed in a scabbard hung on a belt around his waist, but she saw no guns. Considering that Bael had said that sulfur and phosphorus were plentiful, she wondered if the guards were ever really called upon to protect their masters, or if the spear and sword were merely ornamental.

Bael held out his hand. “Come. Duty calls, Leianna.”

She grasped his hand and walked beside him through the cavernous hall that connected the tower with lower palace floors. The silken folds of her lilac gown brushed the stone corridor, its petticoat undergarment rustling softly. Soft sconces positioned along their way lent a golden cast to the gown’s delicate, white lace collar. The collar draped its scoop-necked bodice and covered her upper arms demurely. They moved downward to the ballroom and banquet room.

“So tell me why?” Bael said.

“Why what?”

“Why were you questioning my status here, my power? Why do you ask about servants?”

They turned a corner and now various aromas filled the air, both of baking and of roasting, rich and beckoning. Leianna wondered what they could possibly eat in Hell; it smelled inviting and she hoped the aromas genuinely matched the food to be served. “First, I want to make sure that you can protect me here. Secondly, I want to know if your servants are condemned souls, forced to serve you as slaves.”

He slowed his pace, squeezing her hand. “I can protect you if I am beside you, my love. That is why I forbid you to come here without me, or to go wandering off without me or my having designated a trustworthy guard for you. I have already made it very clear to my people, as did Ashtoreth, that if any who owe allegiance to Hell should in any way harm you, be it done in Hell, on the astral planes or on Earth, they will be punished beyond severity. Aside from that, trust in the protection that Quatama, the Seraphim and the Creator have given you.”

“And the servants?”

“They are all willing and loyal, whether they are condemned to Hell because of Earthly misdeeds or they have chosen to descend to our realm of their own volition.”

“In mortal slave cultures, a job in the house of the master was a cushy job.”

“And so it is here, but if a soul is not being punished for a serious sin, he or she is treated decently.” Down at the end of the corridor large double doors opened for them. Inside, four male waiters stood stiffly in dark suits near the long dinner table set with linen, china plates, silver cutlery and crystal goblets. In the eight chairs ranged about the table, six people sat, waiting for them.

Leianna saw Quatama nod to the two empty seats to his left. Ashtoreth, his golden hair neatly brushed and wearing a Roman toga, his favorite mode of dress here, sat at Qua­tama’s right side. Across from Ashtoreth, sat a woman Leianna hadn’t seen for 35,000 years: Affaeteres, Lucifer’s wife, mother of his sons. She had some minor facial lines, the only hint of those years having passed, her long blonde hair coiffed in an intricate upsweep. To her right and across from Quatama sat Lucifer himself, his own hair as thick, golden and wavy as Ash’s, for Lucifer’s first son resembled him strongly, although Ash’s sea green eyes matched his mother’s. He had not inherited Lucifer’s piercing, blue eyes.

Leianna was also seeing Lucifer for the first time since he fell from grace. To Lucifer’s right sat a beautiful slender woman with blonde hair a shade or two lighter than Affaeteres’s and a face that could easily have been her daughter’s. Leianna took her seat next to Quatama and across from this girl. With typical candor, she told her, “We’ve never met, I believe. My name is Leianna. Are you a family member whom I’m unaware of?”

The girl appeared confused and turned to the young, fair-haired man who sat to her right and directly across from Bael as he sat down next to Leianna. The girl asked her companion, “May I answer?”

The young man, who seemed familiar to Leianna, said, “Of course, you may, Regan. And tell Leianna who I am as well.”

“Good evening. I am Regan, a concubine from the harem of Lord Azmodeus and honored to sit here at this table with him and to serve him and his family.” She spoke demurely and lowered her eyes after speaking.

Leianna sat quietly for a moment and then gazed at Azmodeus, Bael and Ashtoreth’s younger brother. “I didn’t recognize you, Az, until you spoke. I remembered the fourteen-year-old I once knew. You’ve obviously become a man, but your speech patterns haven’t changed.” She didn’t mention the Halloween over five years ago when he had disguised himself as an obnoxious, sarcastic teenager in the mortal world and harassed her as she, as Leigh Ann Elfman, and her sister Ginnie were taking Daniel out trick-or-treating. She also hid her surprise when Regan asked his permission to respond to her and then described herself as his concubine. Now she nodded to the timid girl and said: “Good evening to you, too, Regan.” The girl raised her eyes briefly to meet her own and gave an almost imperceptible nod back. “You look so like Affaeteres that I thought, at first, over the long years since we’ve seen one another, that she might have had a daughter.”

Affaeteres spoke for the first time. “My son simply wishes to insult me by parading about a woman whose beauty is similar to that which I once possessed.”

Leianna simply stared at the woman who had once been like a second mother to her. “Mother Aff? You’re still just as beautiful.”

“Are you blind, Leianna? I have shriveled in this realm, my skin dry, my hair dull, my nose pinched. My youngest son has to remind me of this, even on this day when I am to reunite with you, Bael’s beloved, who was to be my daughter through marriage, whom I loved and nurtured when you were little and your true mother, Eve, was trapped on Earth. Azmodeus, why did you bring your trollop to this monumental dinner?”

Regan’s cheeks burned crimson; she appeared torn between appealing to Azmodeus for direction, who sat there motionless, and fleeing the room. A thick, coagulating silence engulfed them. Leian­na felt Quatama’s hand briefly touch her arm. She looked at Affaeteres. “Mother Aff, perhaps you feel that way inside. Bael told me of how Hell has tested and tried you. But although I don’t know Regan at all, I feel that she is not deliberately trying to mock you by resembling you. She has no control over that at all, and your accusation may have deeply hurt her. Az is not using Regan as a mirror to remind you of your flaws. You are not flawed, your beauty is your own, and any who resemble you only compliment you.” Leianna sat waiting to see how Affaeteres would react, glancing anxiously at the troubled woman.

Affaeteres stared back, her eyes suddenly wet with tears. She stood up stiffly. “My dear, soon-to-be adopted daughter through marriage, it took your visit to Hell to open the thickly scabbed wound that Hell has inflicted upon me.” She pulled back her chair and began walking away from the banquet table. “It still pains me, and now it bleeds again.”

Leianna also stood up. “Please don’t leave, Mother Aff. I need you here!”

The older woman hesitated, turning back.

“Please! Don’t leave me. Not alone here,” she said, sincerely uncomfortable confronting Lucifer without Affaeteres beside him. The fact that Mother Aff seemed to have succumbed to a sort of madness made Leianna all the more determined to want some justice in this sad dimension for those being manipulated within it. “Please, Mother Aff! I was only trying to help.”

Lucifer twisted in his chair, confronting his wife. “Sit down, Affaeteres! And apologize to your youngest and his damned trol­lop.”

Leianna sucked her breath in and expelled it angrily. “Father Luci­fer!” Her tone plainly rebuked his insult to Regan. During the war in Heaven, Leianna had expressed herself just as plainly to him.

He apparently still felt no qualms in responding back to her just as blatantly, leaning toward her with a confidential air. “Azmodeus has many concubines. This one is nothing more than an ornament that Az has chosen to wear on his arm. And he did deliberately choose her because she resembles his mother and he knows that irritates Aff. He also probably means to impress you, Leianna, with the example of Regan’s extreme subservience. Or maybe depress you with it. If I recall from that long ago time, during Eliom’s short-lived war, you were anything but subservient to Bael’s needs until you knew you were about to lose him.

“You and Quatama must forgive us our little entertainments. It gets so boring here in Hell and when we have extraordinary guests, we like to test them in little ways that give us a rise. Please pay these little squabbles no attention, Quatama. We are glad that you’ve accepted our invitation to dine and discuss, shall we say, a new tomorrow?”

As he spoke, Affaeteres had reseated herself. She held up her crystal goblet and struck it delicately with a silver spoon, creating a dulcet ring. “I wish to say something: I have returned.” The dinner guests waited patiently. “I apologize to you, Regan, as Leianna has requested of me. You are most welcome at my table.” She gestured with her hand to the four standing waiters. “Dinner may be served.”

One of the waiters snapped his fingers and new waiters came into the room, carrying various trays of food and beverages, wheel­ing carts also laden with food. Leianna watched curiously as the other three original waiters surveyed the food, and sliced then lifted morsels of each dish with their own cutlery into their own mouths. When all met with their satisfaction, they gestured for the new waiters to begin serving each offering, first to Lucifer and then to his guests and family.

A thick soup ladled into large bowls held what appeared to be succulent chunks of chicken within the broth and chopped vegetables. Salad plates were heaped with green feathery leaves, orange pepper slices, ordinary cucumbers and tomatoes and pale slices of mushroom. Small clear canisters of salad dressing were placed beside each plate, a thick purple sauce within. Leianna pointed to it. “What is it?”

A waiter answered. “A plum vinaigrette, my lady.”

She nodded. All but two of the waiters had thin black hair combed slickly down and back onto their necks; all wore dark suits with white shirts and were thin. The head waiter and one of the tasters were bald, and now all but the headwaiter withdrew a few paces from the table. The headwaiter placed a jeweled centerpiece on the table before Lucifer and also stepped back.

Lucifer reached over and pressed one of its ruby jewels. It lit up like a lamp, its rays scintillating and spreading out, around and beyond the table.

Leianna became startled, scraping her chair backwards, but Bael stayed her with his hand. “A protective aura,” he explained, “safeguarding us. A custom long established.”

“You need protection during dinnertime?!”

Lucifer answered wryly. “We have upon occasion suffered disruptions and distractions.” He spooned his soup and swallowed his first mouthful.

Water in crystal decanters had already been placed on the table. Azmodeus said, “Regan.” It was not a request. She rose and poured each crystal goblet full, attending to her own last and then took her seat again.

Lucifer said: “Once the force field is set, we engage a trusted servant to serve the remaining meal. This is for your protection as well. Many here suffer no sympathy or love for those who help cast us into Hell.”

Regan settled her gaze upon her place setting, her soup and salad, but lifted no fork or spoon to eat them with.

She intrigued Leianna, seeming not to belong in Hell, much less subservient to its youngest prince noted for his lewdness. Leianna would pursue this later, not now. Tonight she would broach the possibility of an Alliance between Heaven and Hell.

She glanced across at Lucifer. He had finished his soup and was chomping his salad with the heartiness of a man for whom food was an art, who cherished every nuance of texture and flavor. He swallowed and said, “Eat! Eat, please! The food’s been tested. It’s safe.”

Startled at the thought that the taster earlier hadn’t only been approving the taste of their dinner items, she tried the soup, mildly seasoned, its vegetables crisp. The others did likewise, even Regan, as if Leianna were a bell, leading the rest of them.

They ate silently, slightly strained in their quiet courtesy, body language veiled.

The first course ended. Regan stood up and cleared the salad and soup dishes away. Slender and small, her shortness was the one trait completely opposite to the regal height of Affaeteres. Regan moved between two serving stations and the table, carrying heated plates filled with roasted beef and potatoes and vegetables smothered in a rich wine sauce, serving one to each diner, her own last. She then accepted from the head waiter three large baskets of soft, fragrant rolls and butter, placed them on the table, front, middle and end.

“And now,” Lucifer said, “please take your time and savor our chef’s culinary delights. We can reacquaint ourselves in a friendly manner while we appreciate his skills. But first, some wine!” He snapped his fingers and a rich, red Burgundy appeared in decanters on either side of the banquet table, as well as wine glasses for everyone. “It wouldn’t be Hell,” Lucifer joked, “without a little magic. Actually this is my own private stock, its vintage quite an­cient, and its taste exquisite.” He snapped his fingers again. Regan stood up and served the wine, then reseated herself.

Lucifer raised his glass. “A toast then. To a new dialogue be­tween Heaven and Hell and to the renewed courtship of my son Bael and the beautiful Leianna!”

Bael and Leianna drank along with the others, nodding to them. Quatama pointed his emptied glass at their host. “A true dialogue will bring many benefits. Heaven wishes to reform Hell. The time for its use purely as a punishment plane, for mortals consigned by their actions or trapped into it or resigned to it by false belief, is soon to end, along with the condemnation which you, Lucifer, and your followers, who rule it, have suffered.”

Lucifer swallowed his mouthful of wine-drenched beef. “By whose decision?”

“Our Creator’s,” said Quatama.

Lucifer poured himself more wine and sipped it thoughtfully. “We have done quite well on our own over the centuries, punishing sinners.” He smiled wistfully. “Sometimes we also reward them if it suits our purposes. Does Heaven propose to forgive them all, even those most evil, lifting them sentimentally into higher planes? And do I get to ride along . . . back home?”

Quatama helped himself to more wine, drank it sparingly and set the glass down. “Heaven is aware that some of those whom you call sinners are not capable of entering Heaven, due to their soul’s current negativity. But we have long known that no one is eternally damned, no more than any being can be eternally blessed. One can only be and in the process of being, learn about oneself and in learning, advance spiritually into a better self, and eventually into an unselfish state that brings accord with all things in the universe. All entities undergo this growth process. Even those who dwell in Hell, including yourself, have an eternal right to it.”

“And so?” Lucifer speared a chunk of beef, waving it. “How do you propose to educate the damned in exercising this right?”

“By rehabilitating them.”

Azmodeus laughed aloud, leaning out over the table, looking down it to Quatama. “And just how do you expect to do that? Prayer sessions? Send a troupe of Catholics down to sprinkle them with holy water? Have a tribe of Jews tear up bits of bread for them to throw into the lava rivers of Hell, to burn up their sins?”

Leianna leaned toward him. “The proper ritual is to throw the bread into a real river during the High Holidays to carry any troubles and wrong-doings we committed out to sea and away.”

Az smirked. “Like you know everything, right. Well, we had our share of trouble and sinning down here. But, Quatama, what will your method of rehabilitation be? Hair shirts? Praying to God on their knees morning, noon and night, which it’s hard to tell the difference between, here in Hell? Or perhaps leeches to bleed their sins away? Just how do you intend to reform the lost sinners of Hell?”

Quatama had pushed away all of the beef on his plate and was enjoying the potato, mixed with his salad greens. “We intend to use psychology.”

Lucifer nearly choked, coughing loudly, and then calmed himself. “Psychology?! Are you serious?!”

Quatama nodded. “And meditation. And perhaps some psychiatry thrown in. We will also determine if the earthly life traits were due to chemical imbalances in the brain and body.”

“Whoa,” Lucifer said. “I think we’ve got West Side Story here, complete with the equally useless social worker, shrink and job counselor. What’s that line?” He sang out: “We’re no good, we’re no good, we’re no good, we’re no good. The whole lot of us is no damn good!”

And Azmodeus said: “And don’t forget our own Romeo and Juliet.” He turned to Regan. “I forget the names of the couple in the Bernstein movie, not that the guy could dance as well as the Puerto Ricans.”

Bael drained his wine. “Tony and Cleopatra. And I also have my right-hand man.”

He flicked his glass at Ashtoreth, who put in, “But we’re not going to fight you.”

“Oh, man,” said Azmodeus, “no battle in the barrio?”

“No,” Ash told him, “this is about positive change, regardless of whether you think it’s possible.”

Az took Regan’s hand in his. “They want me to grow. Where shall I grow, my dear?”

She didn’t answer, but Leianna did: “Don’t be rude!” Her tone rang out sharply, regally, visibly startling Azmodeus. He let go of his concubine’s hand, saying nothing. Leianna felt certain that no other woman had ever shut his mouth in centuries.

Quatama said with a touch of ironic humor, “Behavioral therapy is also an effective tool.”

They could feel Az’s anger at being the butt of the joke. He now responded, his voice low, his words measured, laced with a subdued fury. “I’d forgotten how difficult it was for you to deal with conflicts, Leianna. Everything had to be proper and perfect. You should fear this Alliance you propose, but I fear that you do not know what fear is. We of Hell do. Tell her, Father, her and Quatama, what horrendous challenges waited for you and our people when you were first thrown down into Golgotha! I was spared from them, having beforehand been torn from my family and flung through the winds of the canyon into a mortal woman’s womb, to be born as a mortal on the Earth. But when my mortal body died, I found my way back to my father and my family in the hellish world our Creator had banished them to. And they told me of horrors which I’m sure would have cost you your mind, Leianna. You ought to know a good deal more about our world before you so blithely invade it! Tell her, Father, tell her and Quatama of your arrival in a world you eventually came to rule.”

Leianna had listened quietly and now addressed Lucifer. “Yes, I would like to know that.”

Lucifer broke a bit of roll to sop up the remains of the wine sauce on his plate, chewing slowly. Leianna slowly finished her own meal, surprised at how delicious everything had tasted, certain that the meat was an illusion, but not an evil, deliberate one. On the higher planes, a roast turkey dinner was created using a form of psychic tofu for any animal flesh. “It will help me to understand what you and your people underwent.”

Lucifer poured more wine for himself, sitting back. “Regan,” he commanded, “clear the table and serve dessert.”

The petite blonde complied. For the first time, Leianna noticed that she was dressed in the Eliomese style, a snug white gown that hugged her soft curves and resembled Affaeteres’s. Regan removed the used dishes and glasses, waited until the head waiters tasted the thick berry pie and chocolate mousse, and then served them to the dinner guests. The coffee and tea were also tasted, and steaming pots were placed onto the table for them to choose and help themselves.

“Very good, Regan,” Lucifer told her. “You may sit down and join us again.” His tone held a softened edge of weariness. He looked at Leianna. “The last you saw of me, my family and followers, we were being lifted into the roiling cloud of blinding light. Now you ask me what befell us afterwards. Didn’t Bael speak to you of this?”

“Only that you were blinded and buffeted about within that cloud, and that he fell unconscious until he arrived in a land that seemed devoid of light, except for the fiery glow of volcanoes and phosphorus pools.” She glanced at Bael. “He told me that hours later a dim, misty dawn broke, and that a dark grey sky rose over the world you were exiled into.”

Lucifer remembered, grimacing. “Exiled, yes! Our arrival point resembled a moonscape except that in the distance a volcano soon steamed rivers of lava flowing down its slopes, its smoke and ash obscuring the sky.”

Ashtoreth spoke up. “We were all afraid, especially the women, who began to wail and beseech my father to ask the Creator’s forgiveness. But it was too late for that. None of us knew this would happen.”

Affaeteres stood up. “I didn’t wail.” She sat down.

“No, you didn’t, Mother,” Ash said. “You were very afraid, but you acted bravely.”

“Yes, I did. When this world was at its worst, I could stomach it better.” She looked at Lucifer. “Well, my dear, tell Leianna and Quatama the tale of how we survived Hell.”