Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

The cardinal came to him near first light, asking if he’d had a bad dream. Yes, he most certainly had. The cardinal pulled him gently into his bedroom and he allowed it. He allowed everything. Everything seemed normal. Except that Cardinal Cyriac now slept on his back.

“Yet it seems to me, Holy Father, that by this argument no two Christians might honestly disagree. Could God not be served in different ways by men with different minds?” the young man said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve.

Might not a young woman privately visit her uncle by marriage to discuss a matter of Christian law? And as for sounds of pleasure, castle walls treat the ears capriciously. Do you know what you risk with this accusation? Are you very, very sure

“I. Was. In Hell.” “You still are.” “Are. You. An angel?” “No. But there’s one here. And more are coming.” “Good,” he said, crying, looking like a pale, adult toddler. “That’s good.” “Maybe we won’t think so. The war is coming with them.”

The Lord made answer.

Intomyheart!!! but i can still do this ican still He blew out of his nose, bloody now. This is what i’m for i do this i drive it home i’m strong strong please

Then something irresistible grabbed his arm. Jerked it behind him, the pain dazzling. Ripped it off. His arm off still gripping the spearhead. He looked around and saw it. The other devil had it.

She screamed Thomas’s name over and over again and fell to her knees watching his arm ripped from him, watching him fall on the table like a pile of laundry, then roll onto the flagstones. Dead. She screamed, “NO!” She screamed, “PLEASE!

WHAT ARE YOU WE’LL FIND OUT NOW For the first time she knew the answer. She smiled. She looked sleepily at it, almost gone. You know what I am. OH. THAT.

She clenched her teeth, still smiling. It bit her legs off and flung her into the middle of the courtyard. And she died.

A surge of corpses squeezed into the courtyard, not separately; they moved as one thing. Once inside, it re-formed itself. Four legs, or three, at its pleasure, composed entirely of stacked corpses. It moved around the courtyard gathering up fleeing people with its horrid mouth.

It toppled, gratefully. Its dead all sighed at once, released. Just another pile of dead in a dying world God had left behind.

A light came from the girl. It shone into the sky, up and up, as warm and heartbreaking as the first finger of dawn.

Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water. Three angels came up. Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

Thomas went to his knees. The world swam with black. He knew he was dying, that unmooring feeling came again, and still he tried to see where the girl was, if she was safe.

He smiled at that, or thought he did, but he was beyond the power to move any part of himself, even the tiny muscles that pulled his mouth. His hearing winked out, leaving only thoughts. Is this it? When does even this stop? Is this how it was for the ones I killed?

I’m old, he thought. When did I get old?

Hell’s first floor, he began to grasp, was begging. An utter loss of dignity, if not hope. Not yet. “Please.” “Well …” “Please?” “No.” Silence.

Thomas de Givras, I damn thee and then chewing him down alive. He shivered and let it. I damn thee He cried and let it. I damn thee And then he just let it. Eventually he even stopped yelling, and that was when they decided he was ready for something worse.

Hell was mutable and hard, banal and shocking, painful and numbing, burning and frozen, but mostly it was real. He had become the butt of every joke he told. Hell was real.

The thing that had been Thomas croaked through its open mouth but could not speak. This was the meeting of their souls, then—his withered, hers in glory, hers somehow not just her. He had never seen a sight that looked so beautiful; he had forgotten what beauty was.

He wept at the relief, the pure ecstasy of relief. Her small hand lay across his eyes and it felt good. Beyond good.

She whom he had loved as a daughter, and more than that, if that were possible, had come again to give him hope.

Why did you not come as I would know you? I came as you would follow me. I came as you would love me in innocence. Why me? That question has never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction. But you were the last one. The last one I could still save. And yet this is Hell. I’m here. Not for long. I’m damned. Not anymore.

But it will be harder for you if you remember. Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss. Those gray eyes. Those gray eyes through every part of him, loving what was strong and what was weak indifferently. Yes. I say yes.

He saw the stars above him, and something passed before them. A seagull. Just a seagull. He slept.

“An army of them in the sky. The most beautiful things. And yet I hope I forget them, for they are awful, too.”

Cardinal Hanicotte had been crushed near the entrance to the chapel, where many had tried to hide, his robes and fine gloves matted with blood. One of many, alike in death, wedded together under the stone angels and devils that had arched over the door. But Hanicotte was at the center. A stone devil had him by the hair. A stone saint had him by the hand.

This pope radiated benevolence, and his smile now began in his heart, not on his face.

She had awakened in her tree this morning, bitterly cold.

The tallest of them, a strong-looking fellow with long hair and a nearly white beard, had blanched pale at the sight of her. He looked familiar to her, as though she had dreamed of him. “I need help burying my father,” she said. The tall one stared at her and cried, trying to hide it.

The tall one walked nearest. The one with the dark hair, just graying. He wore a wide straw hat with a spoon through it. She liked him very much. It would be too bold to ask him on only a day’s acquaintance, but she prayed for some sign that she could trust him; her dearest and wildest hope was that this man would be a second father to her. She would need one. He was not a learned man, as her father had been, but goodness shone from him as from an unseen sun.

Would you like to know my name?” she said. “I already do.” She smiled impishly. She liked games. “Then tell me.” He bent toward her. This would be a secret. Little Moon.

He was nearly out the door when she tapped her ring three times on the bench. Bull. Fox. Lamb. He stopped and swallowed hard. He smiled despite himself, his eyes moistening. He tapped his bowl on the wall three times.

And then the old Franciscan left the castle of Arpentel, and made for Amiens, where his daughter even now tended the convent garden, eyeing the sorrel she would pick for him in the morning.