16

HERO

What is a god? Bugger if I know, laddie. I’ve been here longer than most and I’ve yet to meet the supposed all-powerful beings that control the place.

The god of the Library isn’t the librarian—or at least, isn’t always the librarian. The patron god of the Library is the one who needs it, who claims the necessity of a place of stories and souls and is willing to build it. Sometimes that’s the librarians and curators, sometimes that’s the storytellers, but sometimes? Sometimes it’s just you. You, the reader, who found your wild and winding way here to the pages. You have a library inside you, do you not? Stories, told and untold. That is the power of gods.

Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1686 CE

“Ramiel.” Hero’s voice was low and dry. “You take me to the most romantic places.”

“Only the best for you,” Rami deadpanned, to Hero’s delight. He really was having the worst effect on the angel; Rami was in danger of developing a sense of humor. It was a thoughtful gesture, giving something else for Hero to focus on besides the damp stone walls that swirled up around them like jaws closing. Hero’s stomach did a lurch as Rami’s transit—teleport, flight, whatever—landed them on solid ground.

Which quickly turned to wet ground.

“My boots!” Hero lifted one foot, then the other, to no avail. Water flooded the labyrinth hallway and sloshed around their ankles. A scent like aquatic death—brown and blue and dark as a cave—hit his nose, not dissipated at all by the open sky above them. It was the smell of wet clay and dead things, caught in the reeds. Hero caught an acrid edge that burned the inside of his nose.

First things first: we need a realm, Claire had announced, as calmly as one would order a glass of wine. Of course she’d had the worst, most run-down, godsforsaken one in mind. The abandoned labyrinth realm that had nearly killed Claire the first time around hadn’t exactly improved with time. They were supposed to slip in, see if the god of the place was still in a cannibalistic mood or if it wouldn’t mind a few million soulish neighbors. Immortal squatters, that’s what we’re reduced to, Hero thought grumpily. Of course Rami had volunteered immediately. And then Hero had to come, to make sure the labyrinth didn’t acquire a taste for angels.

The feathered edge of Rami’s coat dampened and darkened as he leaned down to inspect the flooding with a frown. “You never mentioned flooded sections.”

“The labyrinth was too busy being flooded with ghosts and terror to bother with something as inane as water. Is this flooding from that damn river?” Hero took another step and winced. “More important, why was I not written with waterproofing? This is going to ruin the lining.”

“You were a villainous king. You could afford new ones.”

It didn’t take much to encourage Hero to play along. He pulled out a brilliant smile. “Nonsense, I had servants to carry me everywhere.”

Rami’s snort was fond and he slid past him before Hero could hold out his arms. “I followed Claire’s trace. We should be near the center of the maze.”

“And near the minotaur.”

“Claire defeated it,” Rami reminded him.

“You haven’t read enough fairy tales, dearest.” Hero patted him softly on the cheek as he peered around the corner. “Defeated doesn’t always mean dead and gone.”

The flooding continued unabated, turning the open arena at the center of the maze into a lake. Hero had never been this way before, but he recognized the circle of pillars jutting up into the sky from Claire’s description. This would have been the center of the labyrinth, the place she faced the monster at the middle of the maze and realized Death had been a companion all along.

The labyrinth had played its tricks on them both, before Hero had been magically yanked away by the IWL. He’d escaped, but not before facing a reminder of the story he’d left behind. Owen, the closest thing he’d had to family in a story in a book that no longer existed. If he picked too much at that open wound, it would bleed again. And Hero didn’t have time to bleed.

Still, it was better that he be here rather than Claire. Rami hadn’t wanted either of them to return to this realm, but someone had to go who had been inside the labyrinth. Someone who knew the tricks and taunts the place played on a mind and who had walked across the back of the cannibal crocodile god they’d come to seek out.

That logic didn’t warm the chilly water sloshing in his boots now—Hero was beginning to lose the feeling in his toes. But at least it would win him sympathy when he got home.

Faint ripples in the water traced away from him as he stepped into the arena. Ripples that stretched out and rebounded against anything that broke the surface, sending a thousand crisscrossing tiny waves across his path. They didn’t seem to abate. The water had a kinetic energy to it that Hero didn’t trust.

“There.” Rami had drawn his sword without Hero’s notice, though he hadn’t lit it yet. He gestured, and Hero followed the line of the blade to the shadow of the far wall. It had an uneven shape, and Hero had to squint until he could separate the long shadows from the outline of a tattered hulk, half-submerged, leaning against a pillar.

Hero exchanged a look with Rami, then edged forward before Rami could advise caution. “Walter?” To be fair, Hero didn’t call out too loudly—who knew what else lurked in this place? But if Claire’s story had been right, the minotaur that guarded the center of this realm was its gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper of every afterlife realm was Death. In Hell, Death happened to sport a ridiculous cockney brogue and the name of Walter. That would have been preferable.

Rami grunted a warning in his ear, the only indication he’d followed Hero’s lead. How did an angel so broad and trudging move so damn quietly? Hero was supposed to be the elegant one. But he splashed along in soggy boots while Rami moved silently. Hero let his annoyance make him brave. He took another step across the arena. “Walter?”

The water before him churned into a hash of ripples as the dark shape shifted. Great curved ram horns sat above a misshapen head. Hero let out a breath. “See? I told you Claire couldn’t kill him.”

“Fairy tales,” Rami muttered as Hero quickened his step forward.

“Walter? It’s no time for a bath, old boy.” The smell that assaulted Hero’s nose as he drew closer said the minotaur could have used one. He drew to a stop. The creature was a bulbous mound of puckered skin and shaggy fur, and it had a mangy, rotted appearance in some places. Possibly from the damp, Hero surmised. A peculiar clump hung as if it had sloughed off his shoulder. Hero coughed delicately. “Though you do look in rough shape.”

“Hero . . .” Rami warned, and the mound moved. The minotaur turned to face them. It wasn’t wet, or mold; there was no denying the way the muscles of the creature’s great jaw sagged with rot, revealing tea-stained bone beneath. One eye socket was a gaping wound, torn and ragged at the edges. As the creature shifted, a viscous liquid the color of ink dribbled past the flap of skin to dilute in the water below. It paired with the intact eye, which wandered before latching onto them with a dull, hungry gaze.

“That’s not Walter. Death would have abandoned this place once Claire took his gate from him.” The hiss of Rami’s blade igniting into flame startled Hero into action. He stumbled back, and Rami put an arm out to step forward.

“Then what is it?”

“I suspect the only thing left here.” The tension in Rami’s voice turned Hero’s head. The white webwork of a skull, nearly as tall as the walls themselves. It leaned against the wall near the entrance, initially hidden from their sight by the curve of the exterior. It was propped at an angle, long jaw studded with teeth the length of a blade. A terrible thought made Hero glance back and spy the dry pebble of scaled skin around the minotaur’s working eye.

“The mad crocodile?”

“The god,” Rami corrected grimly.

“But—” Hero glanced between the rotting minotaur that was attempting to pull itself upright and the skull. “How?”

“You can’t just remove a realm’s gatekeeper without repercussions.” Rami shook his head, nudging Hero to circle toward the middle of the arena in order to keep more space between them and the minotaur. It thrashed to its feet, churning the water as something darker and bilious streamed off its fur. It had a dragging gait, as if its limbs had been waterlogged for too long, but it turned its one eye in their direction and let out a wet howl.

Hero edged back and reached for his own sword. “What repercussions?”

“If I had to guess—”

“Guess fast.”

“Claire defeated Walter the last time she was here, and escaped using his eye. Walter, as Death, is the gatekeeper. A gatekeeper that’s been defeated serves no purpose. Walter left, and without a gatekeeper this forgotten realm was marooned even more than it once was. No accidental souls stumbling through to feed its hungry god. A hungry god can get desperate.”

“It was already eating people! How much more desperate are we talking about?”

“Desperate enough to possess the corpse of their gatekeeper in order to eat itself.”

“Delightful! No wonder this asshole lost believers.”

“Yes, well, perhaps we should reconsider our intent for negotiation.”

“If we wait for a landlord who will not eat us for his own benefit we’ll be realmless forever, Rami. Leto told me about this once; it’s called capitalism.” Hero started forward. “You there! Remember me?”

The minotaur swung its single black eye in their direction. A grinding noise, like bone on bone greased with despair, howled from its chest. It lurched in their direction, sending fetid circles of waves across the water’s surface.

“Disgusting.” Hero leaned forward. “Come now, you talked enough last time. Remember? BE JUDGED . . . ?” He tried to reproduce the horrible skull rumble the crocodile god spoke in the first time he’d entered this realm, but fell short.

As if offended, the minotaur used a giant claw to bat the boulder between them across the arena. Hero leapt back and nearly fell over his soggy boots.

Rami caught him by the shoulder before he could end up ass-first in the water. “He doesn’t seem open to this ‘capitalism.’ ”

“You caught that, did you? No matter.” Hero regained his footing, starting to pant for breath. “We have swords! Finally! For once!”

“I don’t doubt your skill,” Rami said carefully. “But what, exactly, do you imagine happens to a realm when a god falls without another to replace it?”

“. . . Oh.” Hero flinched as something crunched under the minotaur’s thick hooves. “You may have a point. Run like hell?”

Rami yanked him back as the last of their precarious rubble barrier fell under a blow. “Go.”

Trying to run through calf-deep water was not an elegant task, less so when the wall they’d been hiding behind collapsed in their wake. His boots were waterlogged, and too tall to kick off, so Hero could only pretend he wasn’t flailing like a wet blanket as he ran. Rami stayed behind him, guarding their retreat. The swamp-water smell turned from methane to acrid oil as Rami ignited the flame along the edge of his sword.

They retreated down a long hallway and had just cleared the next intersection when a new section of wall crashed into the water. The minotaur wasn’t going to give up pursuit that easily. Hero skidded to a stop at the center of three branching paths, and Rami barely avoided colliding with him. “Do you remember the way out?” Rami asked.

“Do I—” Hero wheezed. “It’s a labyrinth!”

A bilious wave soaked Hero up to the hip, causing them to both turn toward the way they’d come. The minotaur swayed at the end of the corridor, a shaggy blot against the waning forever twilight of the sky. It swayed, musculature having desiccated enough that it needed to support itself on one arm, but that still left one fist the size of a carriage to punch the wall as it began to lurch their way. It picked up speed quickly for a creature that was half hate and rot.

“This way.” Hero tore down the right hallway at random. The flooding continued as they rushed down one maze path and then another. They passed several shadowed stairwells, but Hero knew better than to trust them. The last time he’d been here, stairs had only led to illusion and trickery. The maze continued, unabated, but the waters had made the rough paving stones treacherous. Rami’s next step met empty water, and he stumbled face-first into a small sinkhole. Hero managed to avoid it, but they lost precious seconds of their lead as Rami righted himself, oily water cascading down his trench coat of soggy feathers.

“I do not like this place,” Rami muttered. He wiped silt from his face as they ran.

“Don’t be a wet blanket. Aside from the cannibalism and certain death, it’s not so—” Hero twisted around the next corner and stopped as the path in front of them ended at a solid wall. Well, that wasn’t fair. A frustrated whine rose up in his throat. “I do not like this place.”

The churn of the water grew more violent and frenzied, and a grating sound grew as the minotaur attempted to shove itself between the narrowing hallway walls behind them. Hero drew his sword, and his shoulder brushed Rami’s as they backed up against the unforgiving wall.

“Strike for the eye. It’s our best chance,” Rami said quietly. The line of his jaw was underlit with the eerie blue flame of his sword, tense but somehow beautiful. Hero should say something. Something snappy, something flippant or tender, but above all something with wit. But the icy water had seeped into his bones and drowned his humor. They squared off.

The lumpy shadow of the minotaur lurched and grew as a gnarled hand gripped the corner of the wall. Stone broke beneath the claws, shuddering down in a hail of rubble and dust that momentarily threw a smoke screen between them and their pursuer. Rami took a sharp intake of air, and abruptly Hero was yanked into a run.

Toward the monster.

He must have made a strangled sound because Rami shouted, “This way,” into his ear before shoving Hero through the crumbling wall. The space on the other side angled upward, and it took Hero a beat to recognize the staircase. He recoiled, running into Rami’s shoulder in the small space. “No, terrible idea—”

“Worse idea is right behind us,” Rami said with a granite streak in his voice that wasn’t going to be argued with or refused. The revealed stairwell that had been hidden behind the wall was tiny and forced them both onto the steps to dodge the claws as the minotaur revenant tried to widen the hole. Hero felt like a mouse cornered by a giant moldering cat. Rami nudged him. “Up we go.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Hero repeated. He allowed Rami to herd him up the steps at a plodding pace since they were safe for a brief moment. The alcove was too tiny to admit the monster that chased them, tiny—and far too convenient. Hero had learned not to trust anything convenient in this place. Convenient merely meant the hungry realm had thought up a new and delightfully innovative method to torture you.

Still, he climbed the steps with a cautious preparedness. The last time he had been here, the labyrinth had taunted him with doorways that appeared to lead back into the world of his story. Places where he’d grown up, people he had loved, and all of it had never existed. Only Claire, with her bloody-minded will, had kept him on this side of the threshold. Still, it wasn’t as if he was going to fall for the same tricks twice. He knew the tricks now. Easy enough to resist. And, a pathetic voice added in his head, your book is gone anyway.

Maudlin brooding would have to come later, when he had more dramatically appropriate lighting and less soggy pants. They emerged from the curving stairwell into a second floor of hallways that shouldn’t exist. The walls terminated a few feet above their heads in crumbled ruin. The sky was sour gray and choked with mounds of stagnant ash-colored clouds. It seemed lower and oppressive, pressing in on them from overhead, as if the entire realm was a trap closing shut around them.

“I am not one to easily admit defeat, but I can gracefully chalk this pit up to a loss,” Hero said. “Why are we not going home now?”

“I want to make sure we’re far enough away from that beast that we don’t take anything back with us.” Rami had sheathed his sword for the flight up the stairs but had the blade out and ignited again. It served only to give every crack and crevice in the lonely hallway a sickly flicker.

“At least our feet aren’t wet.” Hero stopped at the landing and scuffed the atrociously nondescript stone pavers. Time had worn away all color and detail from this place. It was almost like a realm forgetting itself.

“I’ll scout ahead.” Rami strode down the hall with a confidence he had only when there was a weapon hilt in his hand. The movement threw faint, tilting shadows as he stopped to cautiously check every crack larger than a finger’s width, as if the minotaur was just waiting to pop out.

Hero followed at a wary pace. The farther they drew away from the stairs, the quieter the percussive thuds became—too quickly and too quietly for normal acoustics; the air turned silent and it suddenly felt as if they’d been transported to a new and forgotten section of the labyrinth.

The hallway had been endless when they’d entered it, but abruptly Rami was framed by a pool of pristine light spilling around the corner—no, not a corner. A doorway. It was a doorway that had not been there a moment before. Rami half passed it before twitching with a double take. He began to lower his sword.

Hero jolted into a sprint to close the distance. “Don’t look!” But it was already too late for such asinine advice. Rami fully faced the door, and his craggy face smoothed into something softer and, strangely, younger than Hero had ever seen. “Ramiel!”

Rami had been told about the illusions that Claire and Hero had faced; he wasn’t a stupid man. Hero would not fall in love with a stupid man. But that was the way illusions worked—by being attractive enough that reason didn’t matter.

“Oh, Creator . . .” Rami whispered in a gutted, home-hollow voice, and Hero immediately knew what he must see.

Rami took a step just as Hero lunged for his shoulder. Hero caught the hem of his sleeve, which yanked him sideways as Rami stepped through the doorway and the world went sideways. The other side was a fractal of light. Hero squeezed his eyes shut as he was pulled across the threshold. He threw his hand out and said a silent prayer of thanks when his hand found stone strong enough to grip. Gravity tossed them about until Hero was wedged in the doorway, one hand holding on to the threshold by his fingertips while the other clutched Rami’s coat.

“Let go.” Rami’s voice was rough and desperate. His big hands began fighting at Hero’s closed fist, trying to extract himself. “We’re almost there—”

“No, we are not! Wherever you think we’re going, we are not. It’s an illusion, Ramiel!” The doorway was no longer a doorway but a portal, perched above . . . something. Hero didn’t dare open his eyes. Rainbow fractals blinded him even through his closed eyelids, and he knew—he knew—that if he lost hold of the doorway they’d fall into some greater illusion forever.

“Heaven is not an illusion. Hero—Hero, please.” Rami’s struggling changed to begging as his hand found Hero’s wrist. “It’s . . . I can’t describe what it’s like in the place of the Creator. I don’t know why we’ve been given a second chance, but please, let me just show it to you.”

The desire in Rami’s voice shattered Hero’s certainty. It wasn’t desire in the normal, carnal sense as Hero was familiar with it. No, Rami’s voice wrung with the desire for salvation. The painful desire to be whole, the belief that the answer to everything was at hand. “It’s not real, Ramiel. Rami—” Hero kept saying his name, as if he could keep a hold on him through identity alone. “It’s not.”

“How can you say that? Of course the Creator is real. She’s been missing, but now she’s here, Hero. I found her. If we go back with her, they’ll have to let us in. The Creator, she can fix you, Hero!”

“I . . .” Hero said through a strained breath. He found his voice impossibly small. “I . . . am not broken.”

“Oh.” Rami’s voice was rough and hollow, as if he’d been punched. He stopped his struggling momentarily. “No . . .” He drifted at the end of Hero’s reach. “No, of course you’re not.”

“And you’re not either.” Hero could feel his fingers slipping. If Rami started to fight him again, there was no way he would retain his grip. He felt his heart slipping from his ribs. “You’re whole as you are, Rami. You’re not broken, you’re not waiting to be forgiven. You are you . . . you are loved, just as you are.” Feathers slid between the knuckles of his fist. Hero’s stomach lurched. “Please.”

He didn’t dare open his eyes. Hero knew instinctively that this doorway was entirely for Rami alone. If he looked, maybe his mind would shatter like a mortal’s against something divine, or maybe he’d be lost in the same illusion entirely. Either way, that would mean losing Ramiel, so Hero didn’t open his eyes, and he held, with the barest of fingertips, to Rami’s sleeve. He didn’t know what Rami saw in those moments, or what expression he wore when Rami’s rough hands clasped around his wrist again. The angel’s voice was hoarse but real, alive. “Pull me up.”

His hands were rough with calluses and hot as life on Hero’s arm. He pulled. In gratitude, he pulled with every fiber of his being and dragged Ramiel away from the wonders of paradise and back to Hell.