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Fifty-Seven

Chen, coughing, picked himself up from the floor of the warehouse.

"What in the name of the unholy was that?" Zhu Irzh spluttered, some distance away. They had been in the middle of conversation with the demon's grandfather when the roof of the warehouse had caved in, sending them both sprawling. The beams and girders of the roof now curled inward like the legs of a large spider, blasted apart.

"Must have been a missile," Chen said. He helped the demon to his feet. There was no sign of the Irzh ancestor: the spirit had either disseminated or fled.

"But where did it go?" Zhu Irzh groped in his pocket for the heart and was evidently reassured that it was still there. "Is Grandfather still here?"

"No, he's not. I don't know where he's gone. I can't see him."

"Do you think the old bastard was telling the truth about his heart?" Zhu Irzh asked.

"I've no idea. I don't know much about that kind of magic. It sounds plausible."

"It's certainly true that he was involved in a rebellion," Zhu Irzh said, dusting off his coat.

"Might even have been in the right," Chen said. Usually, he kept out of political conflicts, motivated as he was by a feeling that both sides were as bad as each other. This might very well be the case here, but given what he'd seen of the Ministry of Lust, and also what he knew of the Emperor's relationship with that governmental department, he had more than a slight sympathy for Grandpa Irzh's original goals.

Beside him, Zhu Irzh said, "What was that?"

Chen frowned. The sound had come from beyond a partition on the other side of the warehouse, or what was left of it: a curious hissing, as if someone was letting the air out of a balloon.

"Let's have a look," Chen said.

But when they reached the partition and looked cautiously around it, there was no one there.

"Someone's been here, though," Zhu Irzh said. He pointed to a line of small footprints in the dust. "Hard to tell when they were made."

"Only one way to find out," Chen said, and they followed the footprints.

They were soon out of the warehouse itself and into a series of catacombs, a warren of passages that must, Chen estimated, surround the reactor. The nuclear plant might run according to the principles of physics but there was nonetheless a powerful magic at some level. The place reeked of it, ancient and earthy and primitive.

"Can you feel that?" Chen asked the demon, as they hurried past one particularly potent spot.

"Hard to miss," Zhu Irzh replied. "Lower level magic, if you ask me. Really old stuff."

"What's it doing here?"

"At a guess, protecting the plant. I'm not sure how much security they actually need—not much gets down to these levels, or at least, didn't before Heaven showed up. It didn't seem very great in terms of demonpower, so they must be relying on something else to keep the plant safe."

A layman, Chen thought, might have associated the magic of Hell inextricably with evil, yet although this place was frightening, it did not have the hallmarks of some of the darker magic he had encountered in the course of his career. It was just very, very old: a primordial force that had nothing of the human about it. And Chen could not help wondering if this was in part the source of the current situation: that Heaven, so elevated, lofty, and sophisticated, had not grown too far away from the physical world, so far that it could no longer sympathize with those who sweated and bled and struggled. Hell might, indeed, be hellish, but at times it seemed closer to the human realm than did the Celestial powers. Did that grant Hell, too, the possibility of redemption and improvement? Looking at Zhu Irzh, striding ahead of him along the passage, and thinking of his own wife, Chen thought that it might.

He could hear the hissing again, a sibilant muttering, and this time he thought he recognized the voice. Zhu Irzh's grandfather was, it seemed, back. He caught the demon by the arm.

"Zhu Irzh. I think it's your ancestor."

The footsteps led beyond a narrow door, marked with a symbol that was either magical or the demonic equivalent of a biohazard sign. Zhu Irzh pointed.

"We're nearly at the reactor."

"I think your grandfather is in there," Chen said. The hissing was louder now and he was able to place it: the syllables and cadences of a spell. It was rising. Chen could feel the power building up and for a horrifying moment he thought the reactor was going to blow. Zhu Irzh evidently sensed the same thing because he grabbed Chen by the arm and pulled him to the floor. The door of the reactor room blew outward on a blast of magic, which shot overheard and down the corridor like an invisible fireball.

"Shit!" Zhu Irzh cried. "What was that?"

Chen did not know. There was a power in the room ahead, nearly as ancient as the ground on which they walked, but this time it was entirely sentient, not the ancient earth energy but something active and malign. And it was working. He felt it beginning to counter the spell that Zhu Irzh's grandfather had just launched through the door.

"Who is that?" Zhu Irzh asked, eyes narrowing. "I've felt that before."

"Can you remember where?" Chen asked. He was conscious of stalling for time. He was as reluctant to go into the reactor chamber as if the room had been on fire.

"Yeah," Zhu Irzh said. "The Imperial Court."

He looked at Chen in sudden wild surmise. Then they raced through the door.

Chen had never set eyes on the Emperor of Hell, but he knew what he looked like, so when he saw the person who was standing on the railed walkway above the reactor, facing Irzh Senior, he knew immediately who it was.

It was said that the Emperor of Hell breathed magic like air. He had placed himself outside time, a pocket of protection that kept him from even Hell's curious temporal forces. He was neither old nor young, but cycled endlessly between, now having the smooth face and bright eyes of a boy, now the seamed countenance of an old man, but the two were blurred and shifting so that it was impossible to say which he favored at any one moment.

If this had been a legend, Chen thought, then perhaps the Emperor might have been described as the embodiment of evil, darkness incarnate—he was, after all, the Emperor of Hell—but things aren't that simple. There was simply the aura of great age, and a kind of experience that no living thing should really have, and that in a way was worse than evil, because it still transcended the natural law of any world, and as such, it was obscene.

Zhu Irzh's grandfather was chanting now, his face a picture of hate and concentration. He raised a hand and Chen saw a line appear down the center of it, a ragged strip in ghostly flesh. The gape in his chest was painfully apparent; Chen could see the ribs peeled back like the struts of a ship. He managed to throw a spell, drawn out from the hole in his hand, but it was a little, sputtering thing.

Chen thought he saw the shifting face of the Emperor change again, into a smile. It reminded him somehow of the Minister of Lust, something small and cruel, that sipped at pain because that was the only sensation left. And what Chen next thought was: You've lived too long.

He was never quite sure, later, what prompted him to act as he did, whether it was the magic foaming and boiling in the air, or the memory of the Ministry of Lust and how it had decayed, or the decadence that had played its part in leading the self-righteous armies of Heaven down to Hell, or just an impatience with Emperors, an upswelling of rage that his own life and Zhu Irzh's and Inari's and everyone else's should be so disrupted by these bloody people—whatever the reason, Chen stepped forward, opened Zhu Irzh's coat and, before the startled demon could stop him, snatched the heart from its pocket and threw it like a ball across the reactor to Zhu Irzh's grandfather. It burned Chen's hand when he touched it, the pain of magic transgressed.

Irzh Senior hesitated for only a moment. Then he gave a great, incredulous shout and caught the heart in his cupped hands. He slammed it into the hole in his chest and the hole healed, ribs folding in like flower petals closing, the old flesh closing over it, ragged robe hiding ragged scar. The Emperor stopped changing; an old man's withered face peered across the reactor and Zhu Irzh's grandfather leaped. He hit the Emperor full on, grasping and clawing at him, and they both fell over the rail.

Zhu Irzh turned to Chen, standing transfixed and nursing his burned hand. "Run like fuck, I'd say."

Chen agreed. They bolted out of the reactor room, down the corridor, back into the warehouse, leaping over the fallen girders and beams, their flying feet sending dust spiraling up into the air. Out into the compound and Zhu Irzh was shouting now.

"Run for it, you lot! The reactor's going to blow!"

Chen felt the build-up behind him, magical pressure with physical consequences. There was a hiss like a steam train and the air grew suddenly moist. Zhu Irzh was out of the compound, fighting his way through a group of panicking demons, and Chen followed. The hissing was growing louder. Someone—Chen thought, the Minister of War—was bellowing incomprehensible orders through a megaphone but the troops were breaking rank, tanks and trucks revving up and veering off every which way. Chen saw Zhu Irzh leap for a tank and hang onto a stanchion; Chen barely had time to think, Every demon for himself, when the tank swung around and Zhu Irzh reached out a hand and pulled him up. Chen clung on, balancing on the top of the tank tread and feeling the rumble of the machine below his feet. Then the tank was thundering across the desert toward the rocks.

Chen and Zhu Irzh gripped the stanchion above their heads and tried not to fall off. But the tank was old, the treads threaded and laced with rust, and the vehicle lurched alarmingly from side to side. The tank was climbing now, heading up into the foothills. Chen took a look behind him and saw that the entire compound of the reactor was swathed in what looked like mist, a sparkling gray pall that must, he thought, be escaping steam. Around the compound spread a widening ring of vehicles, heading fast into the desert and beyond; above the mountains, flew a dragon larger than any Chen had ever seen, glimpsed bronze-green through the cloudscape. There was no sign of the forces of Heaven. He couldn't blame them for keeping out of the way. After all, Hell seemed quite capable of destroying itself.

The tank lurched again, reeling to one side like a town drunk. They were heading up between the huge boulders now, on a path that was itself strewn with rocks, and the tank's passage was becoming increasingly uneven. Chen's grip on the stanchion tightened just as the tank rolled over a boulder. It stopped, teetering.

"Jump!" Chen cried. It was his turn to give the startled Zhu Irzh a shove off the tank tread. They hit the ground, rolling over and away as the tank tottered and began to topple. Dismayed shouts came from within. Chen and Zhu Irzh flung themselves down behind a rock just as the tank fell. And then the reactor blew.

Chen covered his eyes but he could still see the reactor as it went up: a display on the magical part of his mind, distant but still vivid. A searing flash of white light burst forth as the compound vaporized, then a ring of gleaming blackness rose from a gaping crater. This was not, Chen felt, the usual result of a nuclear explosion: this was something else, something magic-based. He found that he was crouching flat against the floor, shielding his head.

Zhu Irzh raised himself cautiously from the ground and peered over the top of the rock.

"It's gone," he said.

"I know," Chen replied. He joined Zhu Irzh and saw the crater with his actual sight. A ring of exploded tanks and trucks, a mass of twisted metal like some huge anarchic sculpture, littered the plain.

"And that dragon's coming back." Zhu Irzh pointed in the opposite direction.

Moments later there was the rattle of wings and something immense glided overhead.

"What's that?" Zhu Irzh asked, frowning. Chen looked in the direction of his pointing finger. A square of bright light was descending from the sky, like a glowing elevator.

"I don't know—" Chen started to say. But then there was a kind of click inside his mind, like a switch being turned on. From the arrested expression on Zhu Irzh's face, the demon had experienced a similar phenomenon. Upon Chen's inner eye, there appeared the figure of a man: elderly, dressed in red, with a thin white beard.

"It's the Celestial Emperor," Chen said. He had seen Mhara's father once before, during a previous trip to Heaven. You do not easily forget the countenances of gods.

The Celestial Emperor—visible both in Chen's inner sight and outer—waved a hand. A ripple passed across the blasted plain, and it changed: Where the crater had stood, containing the remains of the nuclear plant, a series of grassy hollows appeared. Lily ponds lay at the bottom of each. A ring of rosebushes now replaced the twisted remnants of tanks. An artfully constructed landscape.

"Well, it's very pretty," Zhu Irzh said after a pause. "But it doesn't really make things better, does it?"

This so aptly expressed what Chen himself was feeling that he simply nodded.

"One wonders if it's still radioactive," Zhu Irzh remarked. "I suppose not."

"We could find out," Chen said. He was conscious of the urge to go down and see for himself what the Celestial Emperor was really up to. Appalling, to discover that he had as little respect for Heaven as for Hell.

"I want to find out what's happened to Jhai," Zhu Irzh said.

"And Miss Qi. And Pin." Chen did not know what had befallen the people closer to the blast site, but even given the peculiar theological ramifications of their locale, he still hoped that no one they knew had been down there. He set off down the hill at a rapid pace, accompanied by Zhu Irzh.

The question as to what had happened to Jhai and Miss Qi was answered as they reached the bottom of the slope. Chen heard someone call his name and looked up to see the two women picking their way between the boulders.

"There you are," Jhai said. She pointed to where the crater had stood. "Did you do that?"

"No. It was my grand-dad."

Jhai gave the demon an odd look. "I see. For some reason, I get the impression that you are not being sarcastic."

"I'm not. His spirit showed up. Had a fight with the Emperor. Fell into the reactor and it blew."

"Shh!" Miss Qi said. "The Celestial Emperor is speaking."

" . . .preparing for the annexation of Hell," the Celestial Emperor was saying. He had a remote, reedy voice, Chen remembered, like the worst kind of priest, all piety and no substance. Above, the great dragon still glided, circling the rim of the mountains. "Now that the power source of Hell is destroyed, it only remains for us to banish the remaining demons."

"What?" said Zhu Irzh. "Banish them where? There are billions of us!"

" . . .another realm will be designated for demons—the place of the existing Earth. Those humans who die will therefore remain upon the Earth itself. Meanwhile, Heaven will expand and—"

"I think," Chen said to Miss Qi, "that your Emperor might, in fact, have gone completely mad."

Miss Qi said nothing. She stared numbly at the glowing figure before them on the plain. Jhai gave her a nudge. "Job offer's still open."

But they were not, it seemed, the only ones to disagree. From the sky, a great booming voice spoke out. Chen, watching the glowing figure, thought that it took the Emperor by surprise: he seemed to start.

"You shall not!" it said.

"It's that dragon," Jhai exclaimed, shading her hand with her eyes.

"I should remind you, O my lord dragon," the Celestial Emperor said icily, "that my word is the law of the worlds."

"And I should remind you," the dragon replied, "that your word is law up until the point of the death of a living being. According to ancient law, if anyone should take such issue with your word that they would die to gainsay it, your power will wither."

"This has never happened," the Emperor said, with contempt.

"Obviously not," the dragon roared. "But is this right? To wage war on another empire upon a pretext, and when it tears itself apart, to saunter in and take the spoils? To cut off Heaven from the millions of human souls who choose to live rightly and still will have no reward? Do you think that is just?"

"Humans who live rightly have still not succeeded in making right of their world," the Emperor retorted. "Let Heaven secede from the Three Realms, let us live in our own way in peace."

"This is not why Heaven was created!" the dragon said. "As an exclusive paradise for those who disdain to take further trouble."

"Perhaps not," the Emperor replied. "But it is what Heaven will become."

Zhu Irzh leaned toward Chen. "Bit like a golf club," he whispered. Chen nodded.

"But you do agree," the dragon said, "that the old law still stands? That if a living being should give its life in protest at your word, then that word and all the ones that follow it will become no more than dust on the wind?"

"I agree," the Emperor said, very sourly, after a very long pause.

"No choice," Zhu Irzh said in Chen's ear. "That law was a binding spell."

"Then I will choose death," the dragon said, triumphantly. "My death, to void your word!"

"Ah!" the Emperor said. "But you cannot. You are no longer living! I have been informed of recent events. You died, and were reincarnated in Hell, a little boy. You might have changed shape, but you are still a denizen of Hell and as such, no longer a living being."

"A technicality!" the dragon said, but Chen could tell it was rattled.

"But still true. And there is none other here—look around you. All you will see are immortals, or demons. So unless there is a living one to speak—"

"Oh shit," Zhu Irzh said, and he looked at Chen.

Chen thought of Inari. He thought of the city, of Earth, teeming with millions of hapless souls, some of them fairly dreadful, it's true, but most just trying to do their best and get by. He thought of Earth roaming with thousands of hungry ghosts, swarming with dispossessed demons, of the Night Harbor closed down and proper access to the other realms suddenly denied. Earth would be a hell, far more so than anything Hell had produced so far for itself.

One living being.

Chen stepped forward.

"You can't," Zhu Irzh said.

Chen opened his mouth to speak. And as he did so, he heard, with bemusement, the dragon say, "Oh Grandmother." He looked up, and saw something small and huddled hurtling through the air, from a gleaming platform high above the clouds. The body of an old lady, falling.

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