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"Are we there yet?" said Madman.
"Shut up," I said.
"Are we even still under the Nightside?" said Si
"We haven't left the Nightside, sweetie," Pretty Poison assured him. "I'd know."
"We are in the dark places of the earth," said Madman. "Where all the ancient and most dangerous secrets are kept. There are Old Things down here, sleeping all around us, in the earth and in the living rock, and in the spaces between spaces. Keep your voices down. Some of these old creatures sleep but lightly, and even their dreams can have force and substance in our limited world. We have come among forgotten gods and sleeping devils, from the days before the world settled down and declared itself sane."
"I think I liked it better when you made no sense at all," said Si
The hovering lights turned out to be paper lanterns, nailed to the rock face at regular intervals. Their tightly stretched sides were made up of silently screaming faces. The eyes in the agonised faces turned to watch us as we passed.
"Are they still alive?" I said. "Still suffering?"
"Oh yes," said Pretty Poison, her voice heavy with a certain satisfaction.
"Hush," said Si
"But what are they?" I said. "Who were they?"
"Uninvited guests," said Madman, and after that no-one felt like talking for a while.
We descended further and further into the earth. The stairs wound around the curving wall of the vast abyss. The dark rock of the wall showed clear signs of having been worked on long ago, at first by tools but later by what seemed to be bare hands. Someone had fashioned this great gulf under the Nightside for a purpose, but who and why and when remained a mystery. Could men have done this, alone or with help? Why would they have wanted to? Was the Lord of Thorns really so dangerous that they had to bury him this deep in the earth? The deeper I went, the more scared I became. My hands were trembling, and my mouth was dry. This was all getting too big, too important for me. I wanted to go back to being just another private investigator, dazzling the natives with tricks and mind games, trading on a reputation I'd never really earned. But I had to go on. I'd come this far for the truth, and though I'd run out of courage and good sense, stubbor
The wall at my shoulder became increasingly pitted and corroded, and thin streams of liquid trickled down the dark stone. I stopped and studied the wet surface closely.
"Don't touch it," said Si
"I wasn't going to. What do you suppose this is? Acid rain, or the underground equivalent?"
"No," said Pretty Poison. "Tears."
Si
"Of it. All demons and angels are warned about this place. We are almost at the domain of the Lord of Thorns, the Overseer of the Nightside."
"The Overseer?" I said. "Does that mean he's the one behind the Authorities?"
"No," said Pretty Poison. "He's much more powerful than that. He sits in judgement, and mercy and compassion are not allowed to him."
"I want to go home," said Madman.
"Most sensible thing you've said all day," said Si
The stairs finally curved around a corner and came to an end, facing a great and elegant chamber carved out of crystal. A pleasant, comfortable light appeared suddenly overhead, bursting out of one crystal facet after another, until the whole chamber was bright as day, like standing in the heart of a huge diamond. In the centre of the crystal cave was a single raised slab of polished stone, and on that slab, sleeping peacefully, a man. He didn't look particularly dangerous, with his grey hair and grey robes, and a calm face apparently untroubled by care. We all filed into the shining chamber, looking uncertainly about us. I think we'd all been expecting more guardians, more defences, but everything was still and quiet. Like the eye of the storm.
Etched into every crystal facet were characters from the language known as Enochian, a tongue created for men to speak to angels. I recognised it, but I couldn't read it. Not many can. It is corrosive to rational thinking. Pretty Poison moved along one wall, tracing the characters with a fingertip.
"These are names," she said softly. "Names beyond number, of angels from Above and Below, from all ranks and stations ... Even ray name is here. My true name, from before the Fall. No mortal should have access to this knowledge..."
"But... why write them here?" said Si
"Because to know the true name of a thing is to have power over it," said Pretty Poison. 'To command and to control. Whoever put the Lord of Thorns here, and made him Overseer of the Nightside, has given him power over all the agents of Heaven and Hell."
"No wonder he was ripping the wings off angels during the angel war," said Si
'Two possibilities come to mind," said Madman.
"Shut up," said Pretty Poison.
She sounded shocked, upset. I was concentrating on the man on the slab. He hadn't moved at all since we entered his domain. But I didn't think he was sleeping. Sleeping people usually breathe now and again. And then my heart missed a beat as he sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the slab, and sat facing us. We all froze where we were, caught in the gleam of his gaze, like burglars picked out by torchlight in a place they should never have entered. With his long grey robes, hair, and beard, the Lord of Thorns looked like nothing so much as an Old Testament prophet. The kind that told you the Flood was coming, and you'd left it far too late to book seats on the Ark. His face looked older than any man's should, and his eyes were fierce and wild and touched with a divine madness. His presence filled the crystal cave, and under his gaze we all flinched and felt unworthy.
Except, of course, for Madman, who shouted Daddy! and tried to climb into the Lord of Thorns' lap. We all grabbed him, and dragged him away by brute force. And then one by one, we knelt before the Lord of Thorns. His presence demanded it. Madman shrugged, and knelt with us. I kept my head down and tried to look penitent. This was a place of judgement. I could feel it. And judgement without mercy or compassion is always to be feared.
The Lord of Thorns stood up slowly, his joints cracking loudly, and I risked a quick look. He was leaning on a simple wooden staff, and I felt something inside me shudder at the sight of it. Word was the wood of that staff had been taken from a tree grown from a sliver of the original Tree of Life, brought to England in Roman times by Joseph of Arimathea. There were those who said the Lord of Thorns was Joseph of Arimathea. He looked old enough. When he finally spoke, his words sounded like rocks grinding together.
"I am the stone that breaks all hearts. I am the nails that bound the Christ to his cross. I am the arrow that pierced a King's eye. I am the necessary suffering that makes us all stronger. The cold, clear heart of the Nightside. It was given to me to have dominion over all who exist here, to protect the Nightside from itself. I maintain the Great Experiment, watching over it, and sitting in judgement on all who might seek to disrupt or tamper with its essential nature. I am the scalpel that cuts out infection, and the heartbreak that makes men wiser. I am the Lord of Thorns, and I know you all. Si
We rose to our feet again, glancing uncertainly at each other like children brought unexpectedly before the headmaster. I made myself speak up. Because if there's one thing I've learned from dealing with the Nightside's major players, it's that it doesn't matter how frightened you are, you can't let them know it, or they'll walk right over you.