John Connolly - The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

“Regrets, Blacksmith, make poor currency. You can’t buy back with them what you most desire.”

“Which would be, my lord?” asked the Blacksmith, sensing that Abigor was waiting for the question to be asked.

“The past,” said Abigor. “You are being punished for what you have done. Were it so easy to make up for one’s failings, then Hell would be empty.”

“And would that be such a bad thing, my lord?”

“Only for its demons, Blacksmith. Without beings like you to humiliate, our existences would be significantly duller.”

Abigor stared at the weapons and devices scattered across the sands. “And yet what invention you creatures display,” he said, “what skill, all put to one end: the destruction of those most like yourselves. Sometimes, I wonder if the real demons already rule the Earth.”

“We put our skills to other uses too,” said the Blacksmith. “We cure. We help. We protect.”

“Do you, now? But which skill does your kind value more: the willingness to help another, or the ability to wipe him out of existence?”

The Blacksmith looked down, unable to meet Abigor’s eyes. As he did so he saw the tracks left by Boswell and Samuel in the sand. He shifted position slightly so that his body hid them, then slowly he began to move away from Abigor, erasing the marks with his feet as he did so.

“You back away, Blacksmith,” said Abigor. “Do you fear me so much?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Abigor tapped a clawed finger upon the horn of his saddle.

“You know, I am tempted to doubt your word. You hate me, almost as much as you hate yourself, but I don’t think that you truly fear me, and I know that you do not respect me. You are a peculiar man, Blacksmith, but perhaps such strangeness comes with your gifts. And you have seen no sign of a boy, you say?”

“No, I have not,” said the Blacksmith. The traces of paws and footprints were now entirely gone from Abigor’s sight. Samuel noticed that the Blacksmith’s voice had changed, and he no longer referred to the demon Abigor as “my lord.”

“But would you tell me if you had, Blacksmith? I have always suspected your loyalties. Sometimes I wonder how you ended up here. I fear there may be a spark of goodness in you, a flicker of conscience, that has not yet been extinguished. One might even call it hope.”

“I have no hope. I left it in my past life.”

Abigor leaned forward. He drew back his lips, exposing perfect white fangs.

“But not your talent for weaponry. There is a war coming, Blacksmith. You may have thought yourself forgotten by others, but the promise of conflict will recall you to them once again. My rivals will seek you out for your skills. What will you do then, Blacksmith?”

“I will turn them down.”

“Will you, now? I think not. Their capacity for inflicting hurt is almost as great as mine. Almost, but not quite. Even if you were loyal to me, which you are not, your loyalty would not be great enough to stand against such pain. So I have decided to demonstrate both my wisdom and my mercy by relieving you of the burden of being forced to betray me in order to end your suffering.”

Abigor drew his saber, and with a single slashing motion he cut off the Blacksmith’s head. The sword rose and fell, rose and fell, over and over until the Blacksmith lay in pieces upon the ground. The Blacksmith’s eyes still blinked, and his hands still moved, the fingers clawing at the dirt like the legs of insects. No blood flowed from his wounds, but his face was contorted with agony. From the sky, an imp descended. It picked up the Blacksmith’s hands and flew away with them while Abigor stared down at the work of his sword.

“Even were someone to reconstitute you, you could do nothing without your hands. Good-bye, Blacksmith. We will not meet again.”

With that, Abigor spurred his steed. It galloped away, and then its wings began to beat and it rose up into the sky and vanished into the clouds.

Samuel emerged from his hiding place, and ran to where the Blacksmith’s remains lay.

“You could have told him where I was,” said Samuel as he stroked the hair of the Blacksmith’s severed head. “You could have told him, and he might have spared you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said the Blacksmith, “for I am not.”

And as he spoke, his expression changed. He looked puzzled, and his face became filled with a soft glow tinged faintly with amber, like the reflected light of a slowly setting sun.

“There is no pain,” he said. “It is gone.” He smiled at Samuel. “I did not betray you. I have redeemed myself. Now there is peace.”

Slowly, the pieces of his poor, butchered body faded away, and Samuel and Boswell were alone once more.

The Aston Martin and the ice-cream van were hidden beneath the heads of giant green toadstools that had sprouted from an area of damp, noisome earth, a forest of them that extended for miles. Nurd and Wormwood, along with the policemen and the dwarfs, watched as flights of demons passed overhead, some circling and descending, then ascending again once they had examined more closely whatever had attracted their attention on the ground. Then a great black steed broke through the clouds above and passed among their ranks, their rider urging the demons to ever-greater effort. His voice even carried to the odd little group watching him from below.

“Find the boy!” he cried. “Bring him to me!”

“I don’t like the look of him,” said Jolly.

“I don’t like the look of any of them,” said Dozy.

“Who’s the big lad on the horse, then?” Angry asked Nurd.

“Duke Abigor,” said Nurd. He sounded distracted. This wasn’t right. He had to assume that Abigor and his minions were looking for Samuel, but Samuel could only have been brought here by Mrs. Abernathy, and Duke Abigor and Mrs. Abernathy hated each other. Duke Abigor would do nothing to aid Mrs. Abernathy, yet now here he was, using his minions to search for the human Mrs. Abernathy loathed above all others. It could only mean that Abigor wanted Samuel for his own purposes.

“Whose side is he on?” asked Sergeant Rowan.

“His own,” said Nurd. “He’s looking for Samuel.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because if he has Samuel, then Mrs. Abernathy doesn’t. Samuel is her way back to power, and Duke Abigor doesn’t want that. Duke Abigor wants to rule. I think that if he could find a way to get rid of the Great Malevolence himself then he’d do it, but he can’t, so he’ll have to settle for being second-in-command. To succeed, he has to ensure that Mrs. Abernathy is out of the picture. That means taking away any hope she has of regaining the Great Malevolence’s trust, and her only hope of that is to present him with Samuel.”

Sergeant Rowan looked at Nurd with a new respect.

“When did you get so clever?”

“When I realized that I wasn’t as clever as I thought,” Nurd replied. “We have to move. Samuel is nearby. I’m certain of it.”

But even as he spoke his sense of Samuel’s presence began to diminish, and he felt the boy’s spirit start to weaken. Something was very wrong, and Nurd willed Samuel to keep going and not to give up.

Hold on, Samuel, he thought. Hold on for just a little while longer…

Samuel and Boswell had left behind the crater of weapons, and the memory of the Blacksmith’s bravery. In the distance Samuel could see hills. He decided to head in that direction. He and Boswell might be able to find a place to hide there, for they were too vulnerable out here upon the open plain. But he was so tired. He could barely drag one foot along after the other, and he was also carrying Boswell, who was exhausted and had begun limping. Samuel’s nostrils burned and his lungs hurt from breathing the noxious air, tinged as it was with the stink of sulfur. His head grew lower with his spirits, for it seemed that his only hope of returning to his own world lay with the very woman he most wished to avoid. He understood the Blacksmith’s logic, but he did not want to face Mrs. Abernathy again. None of this was fair. He wished that he’d never seen the stupid portal, never tried to save the Earth, never met Nurd.