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Chapter 15: Clarion Call

Just as he had been about to plunge into the Void again to save his friends and the other hapless prisoners there, a high devil from the upper nobility of the Abyss had descended upon Tuco.

Tuco gazed up at the immense, ephemeral being in a mix of wonder and dismay. Their limbs were long and graceful, their feathered wings layered crystal, their eyes diamonds. Every devil he'd seen before had appeared male, but Samael defied such limiting abstractions. Their limbs were translucent as glass, but their naked torso was divided into ever more complicated facets that teased and turned the eye, hinting at sexuality from one angle or another, so that they appeared neither fully male nor fully female, and yet simultaneously both.

It mattered little; unlike the beauty of Elf, which had been so overwhelming to Tuco that it had rewritten his desires into a lust for men, this creature's beauty was not sexual. Indeed, their aspect seemed beyond beauty, as easily sullied as purest milk, as fragile as a soap bubble. Tuco could not imagine contaminating such beauty with his vile and dirty form, lest it dissipate like a dream upon waking. He found himself on hands and knees, bowing before it.

"Rise, Baron Witchywine," the devil sang, and, trembling, Tuco got to his feet.

"Are you here to... to tempt or destroy me?" he managed, carefully keeping his eyes turned down, and away from the radiant beauty before him.

"Neither is my wish. I desire only to aid thee, my Baron."

This was surprising, but it could also be a lie. This was one of the most powerful devils in the Abyss, and Tuco had a vast hoard of souls that they surely wanted control of. "Aid me how? Er, my Lord?"

"Would that I might convince thee not to pass beyond that portal again. The peril to thee is beyond measure-greater than that of anything in Paradise or the Abyss, beyond all but the designs of the Emperor or the machinations of the Almighty."

It seemed impossible that such heavy words could be uttered by so light a tongue. And Tuco found the dread in his heart growing-as did his grim determination. "But I must go. People there need me."

"And what of thy charges, Baron? What of the souls entrusted to thee? What right hast thou to risk their eternities to the madness that lies within the Deep?"

Tuco risked a glance upward at the Earl of Beauty. "I haven't yet met a devil who cared much about those souls."

"Neither hast thou looked upon every star in the heavens, nor measured thou its brightness, and yet shine they do. Devils are barred by the Almighty and the Morningstar from entering the Void. It lies not within our faculty nor function. But thou, Baron Witchywine, art exempt from such prohibition, and in thy folly thou may'st tear the foundations of our worlds asunder. What fate will befall Perdition and Firmament should the mind of a Baron be infested by the Abomination which slouches beyond that dread fissure? It cannot be known and cannot be allowed. Therefore must I grant thee a gift, vassal mine. I bestow it without obligation. Thou need'st not fear of becoming a kadav, nor of owing me thy repayment."

The devil leaned down toward Tuco, so immense it was though a great crystalline willow bent toward him in an unfelt wind. Two outstretched fingers, each as wide as his arm, touched his forehead and in that moment he understood how beauty could be terrible, for the devil's touch was an icy, dull pain sinking into him. Samael was wondrous to look upon, but without warmth. Their beauty was a razor made of crystal, so fascinating to look upon that one could not help but touch, even as it sliced the finger to the bone.

"Close thine eyes," they commanded, and as Tuco did so, that dull, icy pain slid deep, deep into his brain. Terror surged in him, but he dared not move, lest the touch tear his head open. And then the pain slid away again. His face felt strange. Different.

"Now, open them again, but gaze not upon me," Samael sang. "Lest thou becomest overwhelmed."

Uneasily, Tuco lifted his eyelids, but even that motion felt strange-more spread out, somehow. His gaze fell across the cavern floor and the red-scaled muscle of his body. But everything appeared fuller. The stony surface of the floor looked craggier, the pits deeper. The shadows fell further into the texture of the stone, and what light there was in the cavern-falling from his glowing eyes and the brilliant radiance of Samael's form-seemed to blanket it almost like a coat of paint. He held out his hand, and his fingers seemed rounder, and somehow farther away from the floor. He curled them and almost leapt back as they seemed to jut out at him. His vision now exaggerated distance to an incredible degree: he could easily make out the varying heights of each of his scales. The tiny modulations in the surface of the stones beneath his feet looked almost like mountain ranges. In addition, his vision no longer restricted itself to what lay just before him, but stretched to either side as well, making the world appear to engulf him in a way it never had before.

"What-what is this?" he stammered, not daring to glance up at Samael. "What have you done to me?"

"Thou shalt adapt in time," the creature's voice assured him. "Yet thou hast not ascertained the full measure of thy change. Do not merely look. See."

And so, puzzled, Tuco stared at his hand again. And nearly wept at what he saw. It was not only a hand. It was a miracle. "Hand" was so small and pitiful a word for what was at the end of his arm. It was a mechanism of flesh that contracted at a thought into countless possible configurations: turning; gently holding an egg; crushing a stone; lifting fingers; pinching them together; interlacing; waving; scratching; stroking. It was both delicate and powerful; its lines were as they were meant to be; it was powered and warmed by hot blood, its own miracle, a life-giving liquid that flowed through it. Scales like rubies protected it, linked in supple, gleaming patterns as fine as serpent-skin. It was perfect, shaped by a life in which it had been used for its purpose, a testament to its existence and function.

He stared amazed at his own hand. And then at the arm that bore it, powerful curves revealing incredible strength, muscle and bone connected in flawless fashion. And then at the floor beneath, stone element forged in fire, hewn out beneath the mountain, looking grey but only for how it captured light within itself, tiny, brilliant glitters where it reflected.

Samael's voice came gently. "Now thou seest as do I. In all things, there is brightness and beauty: in flowers and excrement; in joy and agony; in jewels and drab; in the sacred and profane; in youth and decay. All things are wondrous, for to be at all is a marvel. The fact of Creation is one to inspire astonishment and terror. Infants know this and must forget lest they lie awestruck forever. Thou, Baron Witchywine, shalt never forget, for I have given thee new eyes with which to see the world. There shall be nothing that exists in which thou canst not discern its wonder."

Trembling, Tuco lifted his hands to his face, covering his eyes... and realized that even with them closed, he could still see. His fingers quested to the side and he flinched, finding another pair of eyes above and behind the first. Truly, he had become alien now. It was a different, more troubling change. People recognized the humanity of others by meeting their eyes. No one's gaze could meet all his eyes now. No one's, he reminded himself, but Lord Krastor's. That thought soothed him. Despite Lord Krastor's strangeness, Tuco had had no difficulty finding the friendliness and humanity in his face.

He glanced up at Earl Samael. "But how can that help me to..." he trailed off, his face feeling distant and difficult to move as he took in the devil's beauty. The devils all claimed to be stars, but none among them had ever so radiated that vaunted heritage as did Samael. They were made of starlight-not a cold pinprick of light in a night sky, but blazing, whirling white fire, countless threads of it twisting, burning, knotting, dissipating, shaping themselves into a form of a graceful butterfly creature, but this shape was illusory, like that of the constellations. They had blazed in emptiness for millennia upon millennia, singing the songs of the heavens to the other stars. The white lines of the fire broke into iridescence, rainbows singing along their boundaries, and deep within their brilliant white flames were all things beautiful, for all that was, ever had been, and ever would be was born from the fires of stars. They were the forges of all Creation.

Tuco's cheeks were wet, tears running down in four separate lines, until finally, with a tremendous effort of will, he managed to close his eyes and shut away the wonder. For a moment, the light shone through his eyelids, and even the delicate tracery of blood veins behind his lids struck him with amazement.

Then the light went dark. Carefully, he opened one eye to peek. Samael was gone, and the cave was empty, but for the portal that still stood before him. He looked around, giving himself a moment to adjust to the profundity of his new senses, reminding himself to look but not to see, not unless it was important. He waited for a few minutes, hoping Samael might return and tell him what this supposed gift was intended to mean for him, how he was meant to use it.

But the devil did not return, and Tuco had little time. So, reeling a little as he re-learned how to gauge distances and walk evenly, he made his way toward the screaming portal and, folding his wings tightly and trying to ignore the knot in his stomach, he stepped through.

---

As before, the sounds of screams and howls all but ceased as he passed beneath the stone archway, for a moment making him feel as though his head were encased in wool. The darkness surrounded him once again, impenetrable even to his fiendish senses. A terrible sense of dread clutched at him; it had not been long since he had been trapped in this timeless place, and every drop of blood in his body pounded with the fear of being imprisoned once again. But that was why he had to come-to spare others the same wretched fate.

A bright glow, bluish-white, came from his hand, and he opened his fingers to see the lodestone shining like a tiny moon in his grip. He lifted it aloft, and its pale light cast the shoreside of the Void in an eerie glow. The light of the lodestone and the depths of the Void made him deeply uncomfortable: his new eyes sought beauty, and here they felt blind, so he closed them, struggling a bit to learn how to close one pair of eyes but not the other. Not far away, he spied the unstable boat he'd ridden in before, pulled up on the dark stones with its oars set aside. No need to risk that transportation method again. He opened his wings, grateful to be able to stretch them wide, and lifted off his feet.

The air was oppressively still, and oddly thick. He had to beat his wings vigorously to rise through it, as though he were pushing his way through water, and was grateful to once again possess the strength and endurance of his devil's form. A pang of fear stung him as he realized he had not unstoppered his phial of Wardenbane, and he did so as he rose, hoping that the creature would not patrol its waters too high, and that he might fly over it without attracting its attention.

The sting of the scent of the Wardenbane seemed to clear his mind and his fears. He hooked the phial's cord with the end of his tail, grateful for the versatile appendage as he lifted the cord and looped it around his neck, struggling a bit to get it over his horns, and blinking as the cord slid past first one pair of eyes, then the other. He held out the lodestone in one hand, fixing Lord Krastor firmly in his mind, and felt a gentle but noticeable tug against his fingers. He followed the tug, flying out over the waters. Those lay still as glass, unmoving, and reflected nothing, not even the lambent glow of the lodestone.

He was unsure how long it took him to find Lord Krastor in the time-devouring stillness of the Void, but after a while, he looked down upon the familiar shape of the little island where he and the one-time master of Abyssus Abbey had staved off madness together. The spider-creature looked so small from this height, and lay sprawled across the dirt, legs going in every direction, so inert and unkempt that Tuco feared he had perished, but as he spiraled down through the oppressive air, the creature looked up, eyes squinting into the sudden appearance of the light of the lodestone.

"No, no, no more visions," Krastor moaned, holding out an arm as though to block the sight of Tuco as he landed. "I cannot bear the torment."

"Lord Krastor!" Tuco shouted excitedly, and then dropped his voice, suddenly recalling the Warden. "Lord Krastor, I've come to rescue you as I promised!"

The old man gave a bitter chuckle. "Ah, of course, this time you are certainly real. The last ten times you came to rescue me was but a cruel trick of my mind, but this Tuco is true."

"But I am!" Tuco whispered. "We found the library, and found your secrets, just as you said. Look, I've brought... this thing. A compass? It doesn't look much like a compass to me." He held out the odd golden device.

Krastor lifted his head a little, all six eyes widening. "Tuco? Is it truly you? But what has happened? Your eyes..."

"Another devil," Tuco said with a grimace. "Seemed to think he was giving me a gift of some kind. I don't really understand what for. Now let me try to dispel this barrier that's trapped you." He eased forward with his hands raised until he found the invisible wall of the prison and pressed against it. It did not surprise him that it was solid to him now; Pike had read that the barriers left an enchantment on those who crossed them, preventing them from ever passing through again.

Excitedly, Lord Krastor rose to all eight feet and scurried over to him. "My boy, you have done the impossible. Never would I have believed it, had I not seen that glimmer of the future. There, put the point of the device there. Then open it and place the other point anywhere it will reach. Now, just hold and turn."

Tuco held the compass still and swiveled it, using the hinged point to describe a circle on the invisible wall. Now he recognized the device: it was similar to tools the Brothers used to create perfect circles for summonings. The point slid across the wall as smoothly as a fingertip across a soaped pane of glass, and then he nearly fell forward as the barrier suddenly vanished. Elated, he folded Lord Krastor in an awkward embrace, momentarily forgetting any propriety or etiquette, but the elderly Brother only squeezed him back, weeping tears of relief.

"I'm afraid I shall have to fly to get you back to the portal," Tuco said after a moment. "Will you be afraid?"

"Less afraid than I should be of remaining here even a moment longer. Quickly, boy. I shall brave the flight now, before..." Lord Krastor lowered his voice. "...before anything terrible finds us."

Tuco had difficulty determining how properly to carry Lord Krastor-the Brother's arachnid body was so much larger than his human torso, and to grip him by his shoulders would likely cause him great pain, but Lord Krastor solved this problem by extending a thick cable of web from his spinnerets, and from this he was able to suspend safely while Tuco flew, the other end of the sticky cable bound tightly around his ankle. Still, the imbalance did cause him to fly at an angle much of the way back to the portal, and he continually had to readjust his flight path.

He felt better once his toes were on the dirt again, and he noticed Lord Krastor casting longing looks toward the portal leading back to the mortal world. But the Brother turned to him and told him, "Hurry now. We must save everyone else we can. By the Almighty, had I known how terrible this prison, I would never have confined a single soul here, even the most vicious." He reached up to put a small hand on Tuco's shoulder. "But my boy, there are creatures imprisoned here who cannot be let out among other people again. There is nothing left in them but madness and murder."

Tuco looked at him. "We cannot let them out, but it would be beyond cruelty to keep them here."

"You see the difficulty of it."

"But what am I to do with them, then?"

"In this, as a priest, it is beyond my ability to advise. I only pray that the Almighty shows them a mercy they will never find in here." Lord Krastor gave Tuco a long, sorrowful look, then closed all but his outer eyes. Then he let out his breath in a low sigh and nodded as if to himself. "Let us first help those most able to be helped. I will give you names. Use the lodestone to find them and bring them back here." He smiled faintly. "Devil you may appear, but you will end much suffering today, Tuco Witchywine. A godsend you are."

---

At Lord Krastor's insistence, Tuco went first to the apprentices who had been recently imprisoned, the glowing lodestone leading the way unerringly across the dark waves. He imagined having to row his way through the darkness on the small, noisy, easily-unbalanced boat, and was grateful for his untiring wings, which carried him in relative silence through the Void. The name that called his lodestone was familiar, though he hadn't seen the apprentice in some time: Erlin, the wasp-winged apprentice who'd allied himself with Walstein. It seemed a lifetime ago that Tuco had gone off with Walstein into the wilderness, and through his own devil powers accidentally transformed Walstein into an ogre. Erlin had been mean-spirited and vicious, but an unpleasant personality called for a talking-to, not internment in an eternal prison of madness. Tuco had never liked the man, but now he deeply pitied him.

He spiraled down onto the apprentice's prison, but misjudged the edge, and grunted with the blow, stumbling as his feet slammed into the top of the invisible enclosure. Beneath him came a hum, and then Erlin flew toward him on wasp wings buzzing invisibly behind him, rising toward Tuco with a mad scowl twisting his face-a face which flattened briefly as Erlin himself hit the barrier beneath Tuco. The unseen ceiling smashed his nose and lips oddly, his black-domed eyes bulging in surprise.

"Erlin," Tuco hissed under his breath. "Be still! It's me, Tuco!"

The wasp-boy didn't listen, but hovered backward and flew at Tuco again, battering himself half-senseless against the barrier that separated them.

Tuco dropped to hands and knees atop the barrier, reeling a bit as his body was supported by nothing visible at all. "Be still!" he whispered furiously. "I'm trying to let you out."

The changed apprentice flew backward a little, his wings humming. Suspicion twisted his battered face, where bruises were already beginning to rise. "You're not real," he muttered. And yet he did not turn away. "Why would Tuco help me, anyhow? We were enemies."

"I never hated you," Tuco whispered. "Nor Walstein. Though I confess there were times I wanted to punch you through the wall." He grinned ruefully, then recalled how many fangs that displayed and let it fall.

"If you were here," Erlin said, his voice taut with hope and suspicion mingled, "then how did you get here?"

"That's too long a story. I've got a device here that can let you out of the prison. We'll fly back to the portal. Lord Krastor is waiting for us there."

Erlin flew backward with a distrustful expression.

Tuco wasted no time, but placed the compass against the barrier beneath him. "Listen, if I'm lying, you can fly back here to your nice safe prison, okay? But for now, let's hurry, before the Warden decides to buzz by and pay us a visit." He circumscribed a window with the compass on the barrier, and as soon as the full circle had been completed, he dropped as the barrier disappeared, catching himself with his wings and alighting on the dirt below.

Erlin followed the light of the lodestone as if in a trance and hovered before him. "You're not real. You cannot be real," he said as if to himself, and his segmented tail arched beneath him, its stinger dripping with venom. "I'll prove it. I'll prove it."

"I wouldn't try that," Tuco warned him. "My scales are impenetrable. It will just break that... thing. Now follow me, if you want to escape." He took to the air, trusting Erlin to follow, and sure enough, after a moment, he heard the hum of insect wings behind him.

After a short flight, they landed at the portal, and Erlin was weeping. "It can't be real," he kept saying. "It can't be true."

"Go on," Lord Krastor urged him gently. "Head through the portal. But do not go up the stairs yet. We have yet to deal with Brother Gabriel, and you would not wish to be returned here."

A look of terror wracked Erlin's face at that suggestion, and without another word, he buzzed forward, disappearing through the portal into the mortal world beyond.

Tuco watched him go, thinking of how much his life had changed. Old antagonisms had melted like snowflakes on hot stones. The belligerence of bullies like Walstein and Erlin mattered nothing to him now. The rigors of classes, the concerns about shelter and food, the disapproval of authorities, all of it seemed so trivial. Now he had to contend with divine magics, terrifying devils, and maddening creatures from outside the mortal realms. His fights and frets from before all seemed so small. But just as big, as just important, were his friendships, his loves. These sustained him still. Enmities inevitably dissipated. Love was everything. He stared after Erlin a moment longer and then flew off into the darkness, following the lodestone's tug toward the next name Lord Krastor had given him.

He soon lost count of the trips he made into the Void, to island after island. Many of the apprentices he rescued seemed hopelessly mad, and he soon took to using little pulses of lust toward them to jar them out of their insanity. Lust, it seemed, was something few felt in the isolation of the Void, and in many cases it brought the apprentices back to their senses-or at least made them willing to reach for him instead of running away from him. To act on that lust or to feed on their souls while doing so was incomprehensible, of course. These were vulnerable people, alone and desperate, and all that Tuco wished for was to save them. Lustful acts were incomprehensible here in the Void, anyway, with the threat of the Warden's mind-flaying gaze ever-present.

One by one, Tuco carried each of the recently imprisoned apprentices to the portal, and then he set to freeing the monks that Brother Gabriel had damned. All of his changes seemed important now: his wings so that he could fly them free; his strength so that he could bear even the heaviest of them easily; his scales so that those of them who feared him as an attacker could not harm him; his tail so that he could muffle their voices and prevent them from inadvertently summoning the Warden. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed since he had begun; he could only hope that Brother Gabriel had not begun his threatened purge, but he knew he could not leave until the prison was empty.

Then at last all those Brother Gabriel had imprisoned were set to shore and had made their way, ushered by Lord Krastor and supported and encouraged by the others who had been freed, back through the portal. Few of them seemed wholly sane; many of them wept, ranted, or even laughed hysterically. Their isolation had been long and terrible. They questioned each other, clung to each other or sat far apart, huddling in their robes or tunics. Some even demanded to be restored to their islands, but Lord Krastor stood firm against such demands.

"Listen to me," he told the trauma-stricken, the broken, the demon-changed around him. His words cut through the howls and groans of those still imprisoned beyond the portal, though Tuco thought the cries had lessened. "What was done to you-what Brother Gabriel did, what I allowed to happen, what those before me chose to do-was worse than wrong. It was evil. We spoke to you all of the torments of the Abyss, and then trapped you in an eternity of unimaginable torture. It shames me that it took experiencing this torment myself to truly understand that. But I vow this to you: I will put an end to it. We will find another way. And we will do what we must to heal you. It may take time. Your minds have been assaulted, your spirits broken. But you will not be abandoned again."

Tuco put a hand on Lord Krastor's shoulder. The differences between them seemed not so great now. Krastor was a nobleman in the mortal world, Tuco a Baron of Hell. Krastor had devoted his life to study of philosophy and religion; Tuco had seen beyond the borders of the world. And they had been cellmates together, had kept each other sane through their interminable imprisonment. "Will you take them back to the Abbey now?" Tuco asked.

Krastor's expression sank. "Not just yet, Tuco. For I would have your strength by my side when we confront Brother Gabriel. And there is a task remaining that only you can perform, is there not?"

Tuco grimaced. The most dangerous inmates of the Void yet remained: those who had been imprisoned in the Void not because they had displeased the Abbey's master or because they had uttered heretical statements or engaged in devilry. Those who had not been freed were those who had been sent here because they were dangers to everyone, because if set loose they would massacre, devour, rape, destroy. They were those whom the demons had truly transformed into monsters. And then these monsters had been trapped in isolation for years, decades, even centuries. Centuries living with no time, no light, no variation, no comfort, no companionship. They would be completely mad. To free them would be to allow them to murder and ravage innocents. To leave them meant consigning them to an eternal torment beyond imagining.

"Do you know what you will do?" Krastor asked. He didn't meet Tuco's gaze, and Tuco didn't answer, but simply stepped back through the portal into the muffled silence of the Void.

He flew with slow wingbeats, following the lodestone back to the first prisoner he'd seen here: the enormous horse skull that had swooped at him from out of the darkness. Ephraim, Lord Krastor had said was his name, and he had been here for centuries. The records said that before being captured and imprisoned, he had crushed three Brothers to death, smashing one against the ceiling, and grinding two into paste with his huge equine molars, as though attempting to eat them.

Tuco flew down to alight on the edge of the creature's island, and this time when the horrific, bleached-white shape charged at him out of the blackness, he was prepared. It hit the invisible barrier with a sickening crunch. In vain hope, Tuco called the once-monk's name, reminding him who he was, urging him to calm himself, to be still.

But no sanity, no spark of intelligence or humanity remained in the thing. It battered itself against the barrier over and over, cracking its empty nose and one hollow eye socket. Each crunch made Tuco wince with sympathy. He wished he could free it, but there was nothing human left to free. And so he sent a pulse of lust toward it, a powerful one. He knew he'd grown much stronger as an incubus since the days of his first change, but he didn't know if such a creature could even be affected by lust. It had no body of flesh, no blood to carry its arousal, no physical excitement to rise. How could a creature of shadow and bone feel lust?

And yet, as soon as Tuco focused his power, the thing shuddered. It hung in midair, its long, equine skull turning back and forth as if stunned. Tuco pulsed again, and again the skull shuddered. It bashed its forehead against the barrier of its cage once, twice, three times, as though trying to charge Tuco, and then it tilted its gaze back toward the sky and roared.

The sound was that of wind howling through an empty skull, and even as muffled as it was by the heavy silence of the Void, it still shook Tuco's bones. And then white light poured out of the sockets of its eyes, the gaping hole of its nose, from between its bleached-white jaws. It still had a soul. Tuco breathed it in, letting the exhilarating sense of power flood through him, taking all that Ephraim was and swallowing it down. As he did so, the skull shrank. Tuco felt no need to hold back, no need to restrain himself, and it dwindled quickly, its roar rising in pitch. The enormous skull reduced to the size of a normal horse's head, then smaller, the size of a dog's, a rat's, a white pebble, and then it was gone. Ephraim's long suffering had ended. The silence that remained was not oppressive, but merciful.

Tuco delved inside himself, looking into his Voidsea, and for the first time, he wondered: was this Void, empty and dark, like his Voidsea, his hoard of souls? There, the souls floated on the dark waves, little lights. Whose Void was this? Whose sea? Had souls once existed here, too? He found the light of Ephraim's soul within him: confused, lost in its memories and madness and rage. Tuco didn't want that for him, so he took the turmoil away. In its place, he gave Ephraim peace: he removed, at least for now, the knowledge of the men he'd killed; he smoothed over all the terrible torment of the Void; he gave Ephraim back the shape he'd had once before, when he'd been a young man. And he left Ephraim to doze, half-awake, half-dreaming, in a meadow bathed in golden morning light, in the scent of flowers.

Tuco wasn't quite sure what he'd done. Had he killed a man? Life and death were not so different to him now that he could travel in and out of the afterlife. Ephraim wasn't gone. He was just in another place. And Tuco could see to it that that place would be infinitely better than the eternity he'd faced before.

And yet it was a line he'd crossed. He seemed to cross more of them every day. And acts he'd always been taught were wicked, sinful, seemed somehow to be righteous. Good wasn't always holy, and evil wasn't always wrong. Perhaps this was the corruption of his soul revealing itself. But Tuco couldn't regret what he'd done. If he'd killed, it had been out of mercy. And he knew he would take many more souls before the night was out. He lifted the lodestone and spread his wings.

---

Tuco rubbed at his temples, wishing ruefully that his devil powers could prevent headaches. He was brimming with energy, his body buzzing with the stored power of souls. He felt almost giddy with it, a rush of pleasure, a thrill, flooding him. He felt he could take apart a city and rebuild it in a day; he felt he could soar to the moon and carry it back from the heavens. Always before, he had metered his soul consumption; never tasting more than a small sample of a human's soul, and the only complete souls he'd devoured before had been those of devils. He was grateful he'd never known this pleasure when under the thrall of Asmodeus. It was easy to imagine losing himself to the desire to consume.

His wings beat more strongly now as he followed the lodestone across the Void. He'd released over a score of tormented creatures, and with each, the guilt he felt at removing their souls had diminished. The once-humans had been suffering for eternity, and now he held them safe within his Voidsea. What had become of them, though-the sight of monsters gone mad with isolation would torment him for a long time. The tree made of flesh, teeth jutting out, eyes weeping blood; the apprentice that had become thousands of beetles; another that was a tangle of writhing, throbbing tentacles; another that was only a vile black mist filling the entire shape of its enclosure; another that, horrifically, appeared to be the twisted bodies of a dozen men melded together into one; a mound of solid, muscular-looking flesh; a gibbering, long-legged creature with gash-like mouths opening all up and down its body. Each of them Tuco tried to reach out to, calling them by the names Lord Krastor had given him. In every case he was met with malice and ineffectual violence. Each time, he gave them a surge of lust, each stronger when fueled by the power he'd absorbed before. They bared their souls before him, and he took them within himself, and gave them mercy.

The island he approached now appeared to be empty, but he knew from his day's labors that many of those imprisoned in the Void had ways of hiding themselves-one crablike apprentice had buried himself beneath the dirt of the island and only leapt out in response to Tuco's lust-pulse. Cautiously, he descended to the island and landed near the barrier. He'd learned by now where the solid walls of the prisons met with the edges of their islands.

He held the lodestone aloft and searched, as well as he could, the darkened contours of the island. It was strange how frustrating darkness had become to him-he'd adapted to seeing in any light so thoroughly that this cosmic darkness seemed an unforgivable annoyance. The inside of the island was empty, as far as he could see.

"Hello?" he called, though not too loudly. He scanned the rocks and earth for any sign of life. "Hello?"

For a moment there was nothing. Then the island itself shifted beneath him, and a massive, black hole opened in the center, its contours those of a crooked, angular mouth. And then it screamed. Tuco recognized the sound as one of the screams he'd heard from outside the portal, one of the terrible, skin-crawling screams that came from the Void, wracked with agony and terror. It was a scream of the Throat itself, and even through the heavy blanket of silence that muffled everything in the Void, it was unbearably loud. Tuco dropped into a crouch, leaning back on his tail and clapping his hands over his pointed ears, but this seemed to do nothing to drive away the sound. It filled him with nausea and terror, it throbbed behind his eyes, it churned his bones. Surely if not for the muting effect of the Void, the sound would have shaken him apart-shuddered his eyes from their sockets, liquified his organs, pulled his limbs loose, turned his bones to jelly.

He tried to send out a lust-pulse, but couldn't concentrate, couldn't find the sensation inside him. All he could do was hunker against the sonic assault and try not to scream himself.

And then all was silent, except for the buzzing ring in his ears. Still he wanted to retch, still his head pounded with the echoes of the scream. Gradually, the ringing faded, but the buzzing seemed only to increase, a horrible, grinding, sawing sound. It was a sound he'd never forgotten, and hoped never to hear again: the drone of the Warden's wings.

In panic, he fumbled with the phial about his neck, tearing it free from the cord and holding it aloft. He clenched it too firmly. The glass collapsed in his grip, and its contents went streaming down his forearm, a cool line of liquid that dripped from his elbow. The scent was powerful, but he knew with a dread certainty it would not be enough to repel the Thing that flew toward him. He could see it now. Its head lolled back and forth on its limp neck, myriad eyes staring out widely between bristles of coarse, black hair, all different sizes, all staring into the endless Void. Its body dangled beneath the sawing of four blurred wings, both bloated and gaunt at once, smeared with filth. Its head vibrated around, becoming an erratic blur, but the eyes stayed still, staring at Tuco, staring into him once again, and in them he saw all the madness he had seen before. He saw the insanity that would live in him because of this thing: murder, cannibalism, despair, bewilderment, predation. He saw the enemy of order and life that he would become.

And he knew, now, why what he had been given was a gift.

He opened his second pair of eyes.

In all this darkness and madness and despair, there was yet beauty. The visions of betrayal were terrible only because he loved, only because there were those he could betray, those he could hurt and ruin. Bewilderment was possible only because the world had order, in complex and unpredictable patterns, but a sense to it that was not chaos. Despair was painful only in the loss of hope, and hope was never gone.

And in the beauty his new eyes showed him, he found pity. This terrible creature, formed perhaps before the world itself was made, had never known the beauty that filled him. All it had ever experienced was madness, emptiness, and despair. That was what filled it. It was the only song it had to sing, and it had been singing it since time began. That was the secret of the Warden: it was the first and longest prisoner of the Void. All that Tuco had suffered in this prison, this thing had suffered for an eternity of eternities. No sunshine to remember in its darkness, no love to recall in its despair. It had always existed in ruin.

He tried to soothe it with lust, but it could not feel such a thing, for it had no mortal soul. It had never tasted attraction to another. It was fear and despair and hatred in one. And Tuco knew with certainty one thing more: whatever god had created this thing and left it here had been a being without love or pity.

But Tuco had pity. He gazed upon the Warden with eyes that could see only beauty. He extended his wings and flew toward it.

It drew back, frightened. None that it had ever encountered had approached it. All of them had dissolved into agony and madness. But Tuco flew closer, his wings more powerful than its own. And he took it in his hands, the bristles and slime against his scales. He stared into the infinite madness of its eyes.

And then he pulled it apart, as easily as he might pluck apart a flower.

The insanity fled its eyes as it died. He let it go, and it dropped away, head and body, splashing into the Face of the Deep.

A crack like a thunderbolt split the air, a sound so loud and powerful as to briefly pummel the wind from Tuco's chest. He staggered backward, and then there was another sound that cut through the silence of the Void like a clarion. It sounded of a trumpet, bright and clear and brassy, three short notes and then a long, high note, so loud that it was all that Tuco could hear, so loud that it propelled every thought from his head but the sound.

It echoed and echoed and echoed over the waters of the Void. It felt as though the entire world had jumped, the wheel of a wagon settling into a new track.

Something had just changed forever.

---

At long last, Tuco had no more names of prisoners in the Void. After he'd exhausted the list Lord Krastor had provided, he'd followed the lodestone to the isles of unnamed monsters, wretched creatures that had been trapped here since before written history, perhaps since the world itself had been made. He saw things that no mortal eye was meant to see, but he gazed on them with eyes that saw only beauty, and did not fear. He freed them all. No matter what he suggested to the lodestone, it pulled him in no direction, but hung inert from his fist. And now the Void was truly silent. Only the beat of his wings on the wind reached his ears. He had seen and done terrible things, but a sense of peace suffused him as he winged his way back to the portal. He landed lightly on the ground before it, took a last look over his shoulder at the endless, still sea of darkness. Then he stepped through the portal and back into the mortal world.

He was greeted by a chorus of exclamations and questions.

"What was that sound?" "Did you hear the trumpet?" "What happened to the rest of the people in there?" "When can we go back upstairs?"

He shook his head, waving away their questions, and to his surprise, everyone quieted and looked at him expectantly. He scanned the crowd, grateful to be able to see in the darkness once again-although several of the prisoners could produce light of their own, and someone had apparently found and distributed candles for additional light. But someone was missing. "Where is Lord Krastor?" he asked, his booming voice echoing in the large cavern.

The motley group of transformed men looked at each other. "He ran off after the loud trumpet sound," one ventured. "He looked frightened. What was it? What made the sound?"

"I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back upstairs and see if he's gotten into trouble. He may have gone to stop Brother Gabriel and the others from coming down here after us. The sound might have been some sort of alarm."

A number of men visibly paled at this suggestion, and several began looking for hiding places.

"Look, they can't possibly stop all of us together," Tuco said. "I say we get out of this nasty wet tunnel and go back upstairs for a meal and a sleep. What do you think?"

He was met by quiet, and, surprisingly, a few bows. "Whatever you suggest," one said.

"I'm only an apprentice-" he began, but then remembered his position in the Abyss. Besides, if everyone was finally listening to him, maybe that would be enough to overwhelm Brother Gabriel and his acolytes. "All right. We go back, then. But one more thing before we go. Everyone stand back. Move to the other side of the cavern."

Murmuring to each other, the group of transformed apprentices and Brothers made their way back to the mouth of the cavern. Once Tuco was certain they were far enough away, he turned back to the portal that led into the Void.

"I don't need Lord Krastor or a Brother or the word of the Almighty to tell me that this can only be used for evil," he said. "And I won't allow it to exist. Nobody will ever be trapped in the Void again." With that, he placed his hands against the plinth that supported one side of the portal. Each was the size of a small hut, and once it would have been incomprehensible that any could move it.

But he trusted his strength. His muscles strained, bulging thicker as he pushed. He dug his talons into the stone of the floor, legs bracing as he shoved. There came a series of cracks as whatever had mortared the stone in place broke before his strength, and then, with a grating sound, the enormous stone moved, sliding inch by inch from beneath the stone atop it. Briefly the stone stuck against a crag sticking out of the stone floor and would not move. Tuco kept pushing. His muscles ached with the effort; it felt as though he were trying to move the mountain itself. But he kept faith, and with a sudden snapping of rock, the plinth moved again.

The transformed men behind him cried out-the whole portal swayed to one side, then straightened. Tuco clenched his teeth and gave one final push of the plinth, sliding it more than halfway out from beneath the stones above it. Once again the portal swayed, and with the groaning of stone and cracking of ancient mortar, it fell. Tuco knew he took a great risk standing beneath it-there was every chance that one of those massive stones would come crashing down atop him and crush him into the floor. He braced his legs hard and leapt away. His jump was more powerful than he expected, and he nearly didn't catch himself as he struck the far wall, but he had time to turn and look, clinging to the wall with both feet and one hand, as the portal to the Void came crashing down to the ground with a sound of terrible thunder.

People fell to the cave floor, knocked off their feet by the tremors, the terrible concussive waves of sound, and for a moment lay there, holding their ears. They got to their feet, and when they beheld what Tuco had done, the cavern filled with cheers, only slightly muted by the ringing in his ears and the echoes still rolling through the tunnel beyond.

In triumph, he led them down the tunnel and back to the stairs of the Throat. "Go on!" he urged them. "Up the stairs and out! Brother Gabriel and his thugs cannot stop all of us! But don't hurt anyone," he added hastily. "We were all afraid of him. Lord Krastor will know what best to do."

He decided to remain behind so he could help or carry any stragglers whose changed forms or trauma from long imprisonment might have made a long stair climb difficult. As he turned to ascend behind them, he caught the glimpse of a faint blue glow from below. His sharp eyes immediately picked out its source: Lord Krastor was scrambling up the stairs as fast as his arachnid legs could carry him. There was a wild look in his human eyes, and he seemed exhausted from his hurried pace. Tuco flew down to meet him.

"It's all right," he said as he alit on the stairs near his old friend. "I've freed everyone."

At that, the elderly monk paused, leaning forward to pant for breath. "Tuco, Tuco," he finally managed. "What have you done?"

"What do you mean? I've freed everyone. Oh, did you mean the portal? Because I-"

"The trumpets!" Lord Krastor interrupted, turning to seize Tuco's shoulders in his hands. "Didn't you hear the trumpets?"

"I did, yes. I thought, perhaps, an alarm from the Void? I heard it when I confronted the... the Thing that guarded it."

A stricken look clouded Krastor's eyes. "The Warden, slain. Oh my boy, my boy, what have you done?"

"But what happened?" Tuco asked, puzzled.

Krastor slumped to the stairs, his myriad legs barely bracing his body as he collapsed. "The second seal, boy! You've broken the second seal! You've brought us closer to the end of the world!"