Lucifer’s Gold
As he quietly processed what he saw, he told himself the same thing over and over again: There’s no turning back.
The stone castle stood in the middle of a city of ruins. It looked decayed by sodden moss, but the ivy vines that had climbed its walls seemed to hold it together. It was at least twice as tall as it was sprawling; and huddled close against it were equally tall oblong towers that stood at the corners like patient sentinels. The blaring late-afternoon sun tried its best, but no shadow was cast of the castle that stood starkly ominous against the pale sky, as if it could be from the past and the future at the same time.
Of course, there had been other people who had embarked on this quest before him. All of them had died one way or another — some of the corpses he encountered on his path, and some he would later on. Once during a rainy night, he drank from the hollow pit of a skull he had found half-buried in the mudwall of a shack. It was a way he had found to communicate with the wandering souls of fallen soldiers. So some of the ghastly whispers in his dreams guided him perfectly through the valleys, and even showed the exact places where oases were in a desert. The nightmares were terrible, however, and they showed the different ways he could be killed. But none of the voices ever said what he was to expect once he had reached the castle.
The drawbridge rattled when he stepped on it, but it did not fall in; the moat, in any case, was empty. He scuttled across in quick strides and entered the castle, his chest heaving in anticipation. The gravel in the courtyard crunched under his feet, making singular, lonely sounds that echoed between the empty walls before they died. Then he entered the wide expanse of the castle hall, which was dotted here and there with crumbling stone walls. He sensed something alive in the midst of all of it — something breathing. Quietly, he unsheathed his sword and held it against the thickening gloom.
“Who’s there?” he said.
He did not know how much of the castle he had to ascend, nor had any idea about what or who lived in it; but somewhere in there was a half-god (or the phantom of a half-god) who was said to answer at least one true prayer. Or, in terms of the legend, grant a wish. And if his wish was granted, he would leave the castle having something to show for all the years he had lost in pursuit of the quest. He would have gold — lots of it, perhaps more than he could possibly carry. He did not believe anything else could liberate him from the destiny of a peasant.
“Who’s there?” he called again. But this time, the air shifted and caved around a particular void in the distance, which allowed a centaur to materialize out of nowhere with a loud gallop. The half-human, half-horse form of the centaur startled him, but he was not afraid.
He asked, “Who are you?”
“Wanderer,” the centaur said, “you should not have come here. But what’s done is done, and no one can change it. Now, there are some things you need to do first. You need to atone for your sins before you can get what you came for — before you can get your gold. Because you are a sinner — no one can change that, too. So here’s how it’s going to happen: for your pride and envy, you will be humbled; for your gluttony and greed, you will bleed; for your sloth and lust, you will be skinned. And for your wrath, you will be burned. If what is left of you can speak the words of what you want, you will ask, and so you will be given.” And that was it. The centaur was gone the way he had come.
He slowly worked his way till the far end of the hall. Two walls doglegged into an opening, where there was a flight of stairs that spiraled upwards around a huge pillar. He ascended carefully, always keeping an eye on how the stairs angled off after each landing.
The next floor of the castle did not have any windows and was pretty much sealed off from the outer world. It seemed drenched by a kind of liquid darkness, which he became a part of as soon as he stepped into it. He swung his sword in wide arcs as he moved, and the metal sometimes caught obelisks with a loud clang. But the truth was, no matter what he did, he couldn’t have prepared for an enemy the size of an insect, because it was such an enemy that bit him on his neck and sent him sprawling on the floor.
He would never know how this happened to him, but what he would forever remember was the effect: his mind imprisoned in another world — a world that would later make him realize why he was going to die a gruesome death. It showed him the darkest fears from the recesses of his mind, until he could think of nothing else. The worst part of it was that it made him believe it was what he wanted, too — to be engulfed in fear, and shaped by it.
For three days he lay curled on the floor without moving an inch. He closed his eyes tightly as if the darkness surrounding him blinded him any less. On the fourth day, he picked himself up from the depth of the murk creeping around him (and inside him, too), and felt around the room for a way out. He thought he was going insane, his mind trampled over by the extraordinary feet of the gods and their sons. He would have gladly bowed down to be beheaded by one of them, because it was better than to have his mind played — have it pulped in a vice.
The quest was at once unimportant, somehow.
And then the glowing embers of a fire floated around a corner in the darkness like angelic fireflies. They led him to another flight of spiraling stairs, which he climbed to the next level of the castle. Just as he came around the corner, however, he saw something that he very well knew might be the end of his life.
He saw there, in the middle of what looked like a chapel, one of his deepest fears given life and form; he saw the mane-like hair, the curved nails, the low-set ears, the deadly long teeth, and heard the howl (the god-awful, guttural howl) and stopped short.
It was a werewolf.
Outside, the first hints of dusk began to show through the windows. A lonely white orb hung low in the sky.
No turning back, he told himself. Not so late in the quest.
The werewolf lurched forward, its hind legs bouncing it off the wooden floor like springs. He quickly jumped out of its path, unslung his yew wood bow over his shoulders, took an arrow from his quiver, and shot one whistling through the air. He had no way of knowing if he had hit it, and there was hardly any time to think; the movement of the beast was a blur as it scaled walls, nestling its claws in the hard limestone. But when it scurried under his next arrow and bit his shin, breaking the bone into two, he saw the slimy poplar shaft of an arrow sticking out of its arm.
He looked at his shin as the werewolf stepped back for another attack. A piece of bone prodded out from where there was a crater in the middle of his leg. Blood gushed out first in a steady stream, then tapered slowly into a trickle. The pain, when it hit him, reminded him of when his mind was under a vice — but now it was eternal, somehow more real. The slightest of the weight he put on his broken leg pushed down the bone as if it was entirely dismantled from his being.
He pensively tumbled and fell on his good leg. He wielded his sword and kept it turned up, hoping he would get the werewolf if it fell on him for his neck. His groggy eyes looked as the monster stole up beside him, the claws on its legs making a rhythmic tick-tick-tick on the wooden floor. Even in his semi-consciousness, he remembered that he had laced all his arrowheads with the poison from an arrow-frog; it was enough to kill a person in ten minutes. But he did not know if it was enough to kill a werewolf — worse, he did not know if werewolves could be killed.
But he knew he could try.
The werewolf looked at the moon through a window and let out a long, monotonous howl. He silently took another arrow from his quiver and held it by the shaft. A huge gulp of air helped clear his vision a little. Then, with all the strength he could muster, he stabbed the werewolf on its chest. The retaliation was faster than he could have imagined — it bit his face and tore a part of it away. As blood began to pool in his eyes, he instinctively gave in to a long overdue sleep that took possession of him in a sudden wave of empty darkness; a gust of wind from the windows brushed against bloody face, bringing a strange kind of comfort.
He had to be burned. He knew it. Because he was still alive and the werewolf was dead. As the centaur had said, he still had his wrath to answer for. He could already feel the fire of the gods burning him, scalding his mortal body. It should happen, because it was how the gods wanted it. And if he died before he could get what he came for, then it was okay, since nothing ever happened that wasn’t already written.
He moved by hopping lightly on his foot while his broken leg limply scraped against the floor, trailing a solid line of blood. He was aware of the coming death, but he still managed to drop on his arms and climb stairs, heaving his body upwards, gritting his teeth. He did not stop. He did not know what he was anymore, but he could not stop, even though he knew he wanted to.
He emerged in a strange room that was full of broken and half-broken pieces of skulls and bones. Randomly strewn across the floor were sacks of gold, which still had some luster left in them after probably years of perishing. The walls were blotted with blood that had dried a long time ago. He understood, then, that these were the remains of the men who had actually made it to the end and even had their wishes granted; evidently, they had all invariably asked for gold. But why did they die on the way back to their peaceful lives? The question dulled the world around him an instant, bringing a lump to his throat. Could it be that…?
And then the flames came, licking his body clean of skin.
They came like the admonishing tongues of the gods, and burned him until the bones in his body charred and his blood boiled. He felt parts of him disintegrate, but the pain was so huge that he was only glad to have lesser parts of him to worry about. He tried to close his eyes against the fire, but the eye on the side of his face that was torn apart had already melted into a perfect fluid. Death seemed not to favor him, although he would have accepted it now with open arms. He was still moving, somehow, his leg reflexively trying to flap its way out of the fire — only, the fire was everywhere.
At the end, an arm reached out to him from out of a bright, floating light, and pulled him away.
The eye that he had managed to protect perceived nothing other than nauseating brightness. He couldn’t feel anything around him, not even the pain from the burns. He was beyond pain, somehow, and he wondered if he was just dead. But when the light spoke, his ears picked out the sounds, and his mind made sense out of them.
“Wanderer, you have made it.”
His eye got accustomed to the light a bit, and he looked about him, trying to find out where he was. There was pure whiteness everywhere except beneath his feet, where slivers of his scorched skin floated around on a puddle of his blood. But did he just hear the heavenly light speak? And did the light say he had made it? He was so confused that he refused to believe he was even alive and standing. How could it be when he felt like he had already died?
The light continued, “You are now a new being, a being born out of fire. You are special in the way that a being born out of fire is — your heart is forged out of the purity of a sinful death and the rebirth into a sinless life. You stand naked before me and I can see through your existence like glass. You are now cleansed and your soul is pure. Your sin is gone now; and your guilt goes, too, with the sin. Now ask me whatever you want and I will grant your wish. But beware, when you leave this place, Satan himself will come to snatch your gift; and he will come for your soul, too, to corrupt it, since it is now purified. You can ward him off with — ”
“No — no! I — I want to… I don’t want gold!” he interrupted the heavenly light desperately. There was a new clarity in his mind. He understood there was only one right answer; he chose his next words carefully: “I am very tired. I just want to sleep… And I want the years I lost back! I left my family behind… a long time ago. I want to sleep. Yes, sleep! And when I wake up, I want to wake up in my home. And all this could be a bad dream I had! Because it’s so unfair! Take me back to my home. I want it all to just have been a bad dream. I want it to be!”
And so, it was.
He woke up feeling a light throb in his head. His wife was stooped over his body, a look of horror on her face. “Did you have a bad dream?” she asked in a voice that vaguely reminded him of unfinished talks, unmilked cows and unplowed fields; it brought him back to where he needed to be. He pulled her close and hugged her, and for some reason cried.
For the first time in his life, he was glad that he was only a peasant. He was glad for a lot of things that he had only thought of as his curse. Later when he was out, he held his sickle tightly as he reaped the fruits of yesterday’s labor, along with his six-year-old son who jumped around chasing butterflies, eating fruits and pelting ravens with stones.
However, there was still one thing that was nagging in his mind. It was something he could not find the answer for no matter how hard he tried.
Did it all really happen?
Was it all only a dream because he stood face-to-face with some kind of a god and asked it be so? Or had it all just been his dream since the beginning?
The more he thought about it, the more he felt disconnected with the world. So he did what he thought was the right thing to do: he scooped up his son and put him on his shoulders, and ran the fields until he forgot about it.
