Lawyers in Hell Read online

  “That’s not what he wants, you Athenian imbecile. If justice has miscarried here, it is because your laws were too strict, with no humanity applicable. He wants a new trial. The auditors from Above are coming, so it’s said. He wants to talk his way into those much-vaunted Elysian Fields of yours, see his lovers again, his wives, his sons…. How many eromenoi did you have, Lysicles? That alone, according to my law code, could bring you here for infidelity or sexual misconduct.” The Babylonian’s eyes were sharp in their nests of fat; they pierced Lysicles to the heart.

  “Irrelevant,” he said, head high. “I did what men do in my culture. Are we judging all souls by all standards? In that case, none would be in heaven, neither men nor gods. All the gods had eromenoi, and wives as well: take a man’s son for your lover, send him a fast horse or two; sleep with a man’s wife and beget a bastard demigod, give the child immortality in exchange for the human parents’ forbearance. And goddesses played the same game with mortal heroes. I –”

  “We’ll take your case,” Draco interrupted, looking past Lysicles and up, where three men were peering at them over the dung pit’s rim.

  “Crap,” said Hammurabi under his breath. “Not them.” And, louder: “Yes, Draco and I will appeal your sentence. It is decided: we are the best in hell; we shall win your release if the Seven have souls.”

  The three newcomers above elbowed each other. The tall, bony-nosed one said, “You don’t say? ‘The best in hell?’” He wore khakis, motorcycle boots, and had bound a scarf around his head. He looked to be in his late thirties. He assessed Lysicles with a warrior’s precision … and something more.

  The short, even prettier one in flashy Macedonian armor put one hand on his hip and said, “O wise Aristotle, let’s help them. At the least we can be character witnesses…. I fought against Lysicles. I know his rage, fierce; his bravery, unquestionable. And my word still means something.”

  Then Lysicles stiffened where he sat, realizing the identity of this handsome youth. Bastard. Liar. Fool. Alexander, you little fop, you know no such thing. You fought on the Macedonian left that day, on horseback, behind daddy’s crack hoplites, surrounded by daddy’s best generals, and never risked a hair of your beautiful head.

  The balding old man in robes said, “Alexandros, you mustn’t mix in where you’re not wanted.” But Aristotle slipped and slithered his sandaled way down into the dung pit and the other two followed. “Shit,” said Aristotle when they reached the bottom, hiking up his skirts.

  “Best place to meet, if it’s something like this,” said the tall, pale-eyed man from the legions of the ‘new dead.’ “Offal’s just food and water.”

  “We know, T.E. Gentlemen, as you heard, I am Aristotle, and I fancy myself a bit of a tutor. This is my student, Alexandros – he tells the truth: he fought in that battle against Chares and Lysicles.”

  “So … who’s the soldier?” Lysicles asked, pointedly ignoring Alexander and looking past him to the man in khaki.

  Alexander frowned. “I’m Alexandros Philippou Macedon, called ‘Alexander the Great’ by history.”

  “Not you, Alexandros,” Draco said, tapping his wooden triangle on which the laws of Athens were written. “You, tall one – who are you?”

  “Thomas Edward Lawrence … I fought in the desert for queen and country.”

  “Queen?” Hammurabi wanted to know.

  “Queen of England.” The newcomers squatted down in the muck, extolling their curricula vitae, until Lawrence asked, “Lysicles, do you believe in the Card? Wouldn’t it make sense to send out operatives to try to find it, if you want out of hell so much? Although I could show you some places and people that might make you decide this place isn’t so bad.” Lawrence smirked suggestively.

  “Ssh,” said Hammurabi with a shake of his curls. “This place is bad enough. Don’t tempt the gods.”

  “Card?” Lysicles asked.

  Before the new-dead officer could answer, Draco told Lysicles: “It is said there is a Get Out of Hell Free Card somewhere and whoever finds it … gets out of hell free.” Draco snorted. “I wouldn’t waste time trying to find it. No one knows what it looks like, so how could you know if you have the real one? It’s a cottage industry, buying and selling these so-called cards, along with relics from every age – holy water, shrouds, grails, what have you. Let’s get back to the matter at hand: if Lysicles can be saved by anyone, then we’re the men to do it.”

  *

  Whenever Erra goes to battle, the world is turned upside down: righteous and unrighteous alike are slaughtered by his terrifying Seven, his Sibitti, the personified weapons of heaven and earth who do his bidding. Everyone knows this. The strong and the weak are equally afraid. Always.

  So why, on the Downward Road to hell, are these damned not cowering? Erra cannot fathom it. All around him are fools staggering toward their just deserts, bleary and wan. New dead and old dead, sinners from every epoch crowd the wide road with disbelieving souls. Some cry and bewail their fate. Some snarl, full of hate. But none make way for Erra and the Seven, on their way to Ki-gal, bumping and jostling through the forlorn and irate.

  Then up comes Almighty Kur, red as blood, with a black Kigali boy. Now the crowd parts. Souls make way and skitter back like leaves in a gale.

  Seeing this sign of respect for the Kigali but not for them, the Seven are incensed. Slighted. Shimmering in their dusty cowls, promising fury barely under wraps, they wax impatient to unleash their plagues and blades and flames, their torrents and storms and ice, their chasms underfoot. But the Sibitti will wait for his command. He is Erra. He is the wrath of eternity, ready to visit annihilation on gods and men alike.

  “Kur, time to begin. We shall cleanse this place, for a start.” Behind Erra, his Seven spread out silently across the road, hands on hilts, cowls tossed back: dividing up their targets, each facing a compass point among the throng of victims.

  “Erra, well met,” Kur says, regarding him narrowly. “I see you have changed out of your divinity and made yourself like a man, ready for battle. These damned are not yet at the gates of hell, but still trekking toward their fate.”

  “Think you that I care where they are? Or who they are? They need to know their fate is nigh. Fear me, and mine. Now.” Above Erra’s head, the sky goes dusky and stars, the soldiers of the gods, deploy amid the distant heavens.

  Unknowing or uncaring, a knot of newly dead begin a brawl nearby, kicking and screaming and pulling one another’s hair. Their curses rend the air.

  And the wind picks up those curses and brings them home to each and all.

  The first of the Seven draws his shining sword and stabs its tip into the ground: the ground falls away, into a chasm that spreads and cracks the earth under foot until the brawlers tumble into the abyss, screaming and clawing as dirt and sand and rock fall on their heads. The ground closes over them as another chasm opens, chasing after more damned souls, hungry until it catches them and sucks them down. And from that chasm, yet another crack in the earth pursues fleeing souls like a serpent hunting mice. And another. The Seven sidestep the chasms as if they were puddles in the grass.

  The Kigali boy spreads his wings and flutters them anxiously, then reaches for Kur’s long-nailed hand. “Almighty Kur,” says the youngster, “look at them: the Seven. So big, so strong, so fast.”

  The second of the Sibitti peers over his shoulder, turning his molten gaze on the Kigali youth.

  “No,” Erra tells his weapon. “Not the boy. Only the damned today.”

  Then the second of the Seven drops his eyes, frees his sword and lightning splits the air, surrounding men and women, swathed in tight clothing, who clutch at one other. The lightning dances over them, over their faces, over little boxes in their hands, over their belts and shoes and over the clips on their ears. They scream and dance and fall, flaring, blackened into ash, while those around them push and stampede, trampling one another, trying to escape.

  “Be very still, Eshi,” advises the Almigh
ty Kur, and grips the Kigali boy’s hand tightly. “Move no wing, take no step.”

  The third of the Seven has a sword of ice and this he waves before his eyes, and breathes upon it. One mighty breath sends the cold into a clutch of folk who turn pale, then white, then blue, then fall crashing to the ground and smash into sparkling shards.

  The fourth of the Seven doesn’t unsheathe his sword. He points a finger toward three women in the crowd, whose skins turn purple. Boils sprout and break and spout pestilence onto all those around. Wailing folk drop to the ground, retching yellow bile.

  The fifth of the Seven points his blade to heaven and his cowl falls away entirely. He is all edges: sharp points and glittering blades sprout from his limbs until he is a juggernaut, a man-high ball of death that rolls and undulates and smites and shreds and slices through the souls who are pushing and shoving at one another, frantic to get away. When that ball of bright death is dripping blood, it stops. A tall man in a dusty cowl emerges from its center, holding just one sword in his hand. All around his legs, piled high, are bodies dead and bodies dying, limbs askew, blood in pools, heads piled upon buttocks, eyes sightless and mouths spewing gore. The fifth steps over the carnage and resumes his position behind Erra.

  The sixth moves not one step, but stabs at the dusky vault above. A torrent comes rushing, swirling into a river abruptly roaring along the Downward Road, washing away the blood and the dead and the dying, and those too weak or small to withstand a tide that knows their names and overwhelms them with no regard to whether a flood should be able to reach so high or be so bold … or so selective.

  Now the last of the Seven bares his head completely: an heroic form, all muscle, glowing eyes ablaze. Like a cat, he swipes his weapon across the vista: fire breaks out in once-mortal flesh wherever his sword points. Damned bodies, engulfed, hiss and snap like kindling. Howls of agony come from incandescent folk who run hither and yon and set all nearby flesh alight.

  The cacophony of the damned is deafening. Those souls remaining upright before Erra on the Downward Road are bleeding or pestilential or charred. Yet they stagger toward one another, away from the chasms and the Sibitti and the gory mud.

  Almighty Kur says something to his boy that Erra cannot hear over the din. The wailing of the damned becomes a symphony. Erra throws back his own cowl and makes a sign. The Seven resume their formation behind him, each wrapped once again in dusty raiment: on the faces of his warriors, Erra sees the pride of weapons well deployed.

  Beyond Erra and his Seven and the two Kigali, the would-be denizens of the netherworld crowd and push and run wildly (if they can) or limp slowly (if they can) or crawl sobbing (if they can) toward the gates of hell.

  When the skirling and the yowling and the counterpoint groaning and praying have subsided, there are none around them on the Downward Road. A crowd waits silently, far behind them, afraid to approach. Before them, the terrorized damned disappear toward their new home.

  The boy says, “If they die like this, not in hell yet, not anywhere yet … are they still reborn on the Undertaker’s table? Are they resurrected?”

  “What do you care, child, about the evil damned?” asks the second of the Seven, the most beautiful of the sons of heaven and earth, and cocks his head and stares again through those molten eyes at the young black Kigali.

  “He does not care,” Kur says before the boy can answer. “He is here to learn. The young question all. It is their nature.”

  “Let it be so, then,” says Erra, raising his hand from his hip just enough to forefend any strike from his Sibitti against this boy. “Keep him with you, and he will learn what heaven and earth and hell are made of. It shall be our pleasure to show your protégé what the young should see.”

  “We are here to serve your purpose, Erra,” Kur says. “You and the Seven are generous. This I knew. And your message now precedes you into hell. They shall fear your righteous wrath hereafter. They will know you whenever you come: all your plagues, your blades and flames, your floods and storms and ice, your chasms as deep as the underworld itself. Welcome, Erra and the Sibitti, to my realm. And now, perhaps a hot meal and some rest for the deserving….”

  Erra saw the Almighty Kur smile down at his boy, who was rubbing the back of one hand where black skin was pimpled and raw: the first quills of adolescence were beginning to sprout.

  *

  “Are they demons, these Seven?” Eshi demanded of Kur as they sat amid golden smoke billowing down from the mountaintop, awaiting the appointed time. Below, folk of the tribe strode back and forth until the feast-boards on the flat were bent low with delicacies being laid on by artful hands.

  “The Sibitti? Not demons. They are sons of heaven and earth,” Kur told him patiently. Eshi yet had the shimmer of the innocent: Kur could see it out of the corner of his eye in the light of heaven’s vault burning overhead. But the carnage had awakened the adult in the child, and Eshi was beginning to change: he still rubbed the back of one hand absently with the other; quills, their needle-sharp points plainly visible, were poking their way through his velvety skin.

  Seeing the slaughter had stirred Eshi’s blood. All too soon, he would be full-grown, a mature Kigali. Then everything would change between them. Would they sit here together then – in a year, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand – as they did now, on the hillock where the sulphur springs bubbled, above the tribe’s agora, enjoying the beauty of land and sky, smelling the piquant wind blow down the mountain’s slope?

  “You told me that before, Kur – that the Sibitti are sons of heaven and earth. But what does that mean?”

  “That means they were born of unions between humans and gods; that they have the attributes of both, and allegiance to neither. They are the terrifying Seven, personified weapons in service only to Erra, lord of pestilence and destruction, here to visit retribution and havoc among the damned and their fallen gods.”

  “These Sibitti destroyed so wantonly. How can they be allowed to do that?”

  “Who would stop them, Eshi?”

  “You.” Eshi looked at him imploringly. “You could. You could.”

  “Why would I – or anyone – try to stop them? The damned are not here on holiday, or to make new lives: they are here to suffer the fates they have earned. They live shadow lives here, and die shadow deaths, and are reborn into the torment they deserve – again and again. And keep it clear in your mind: the damned are already dead. You are not. Life is a precious gift to those who have it, and to those who have lost it. Gods and men, banished from heaven and earth, are no friends to the Kigali. The Kigali are no friends to the damned.”

  “But Erra and the Seven are so cruel…. Are we friends to them?”

  “We are the Kigali. We live here. We lived here before any of them came; we will live here when they’re gone. We tolerate the presence of the downcast gods and their damned among us. We cooperate with those who rule over them from Above. And we keep the tribe safe. I do. You will, in your turn, someday … when you take my place.”

  “My place is by your side – forever, Almighty Kur,” said Eshi softly, and climbed into his lap.

  Kur scratched Eshi’s downy spine, comforting him, and felt the young body relax; Eshi began to hum contentedly. They sat that way until a rush of wings shadowed the ground, soaring on the updrafts and diving with the downdrafts: the tribe was gathering, turning the sky into a canopy of Kigali riding the wind, blotting out the smoldering vault above, fluttering to earth to honor Erra and the Seven at the feast.

  Kur and Eshi went among their own, greeting and blessing the flock.

  When the tribe was all gathered in a circle, wing to wing, before the laden feast-boards, Erra and the Seven came down the slope from Kur’s cavern to join them. They were robed in splendor and beautiful to the eye, glowing with the sanctification of the heavens. Up to Kur they came, Erra in the lead, the first of the Seven on his right hand, the others by twos behind.

  “Almighty Kur, we bring greetings from on high to
you and yours. Our merciless vengeance will cleanse this land of evil and satisfy the heavens above.”

  This land? Among the gathered Kigali, every head turned suddenly, in unison, staring at Erra. Wings went up high. Silence dropped over all the tribe like sudden death.

  Again all heads turned as one, looking to Kur. Kur must say something. The tribe is waiting. Eshi is waiting. Eshi cranes his neck and fixes Kur with wide, luminous eyes. Beside and behind ancient Erra, the bloodthirsty Seven stare not at Erra, but at Kur. This breach of protocol is no accident. Erra challenges Kur and Kur must respond in kind, or more than face will be lost this day.

  Restate the agreement. Make its limits clear. “This land on which you stand belongs to neither men nor gods, but to the Kigali. So it was agreed, long ago, when your betters first traveled here. This Kigali world of ours was made not by men or by you gods; its fires burned before you came, and will burn when you are gone: keep this clear in your mind and in the minds of your seven weapons, Erra. Satisfying elder gods is your task, not mine. But by the mountain that bears my name behind us, and by the tribe that shares my blood, we shall keep to our agreement and assist the will of heaven as we may, if it is consonant with Kigali ways.” Kur’s mouth was dry, but these words must be said to the arrogant Erra and his peerless emissaries of destruction. “We shall feast you and house you, assist you in your work among your believers. You shall be as guests of the blood in Ki-gal for howsoever long you do remain here, until you withdraw once more to your godly seat in Emeslam. And you shall behave as good guests should, on Ki-gal’s beloved and honored ground. And now, pile your plates high and taste of Ki-gal’s bounty, brought fresh here for your pleasure.”

  Eshi slides his young hand into Kur’s. Kur squeezes it, feeling new quills scrape, but then must let it drop. Eye to eye, he faces Erra while not a wing rustles and the Seven barely breathe.