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‘Hell’s a big place,’ I replied. ‘Might take you a while.’
‘I’m a patient woman these days.’
‘Smug arseholes usually are.’
It’s possible the conversation was getting off on the wrong foot. It’s been my experience that reunions between former disappointing students and their disapproving teachers inevitably do. I was trying to ignore an almost overwhelming desire to fall to my knees before her, to kiss her hand and tell her how badly I missed her counsel, how I’d all but forgotten everything she’d taught me and what a ruin I’d made of my life– and I just knewthat part of her longed to hug me like a lost child and fill my ears with those platitudes for which she was notorious– the ones that never sounded like platitudes at the time, but instead a kind of spell bestowing upon you the faith you needed to carry on and try again.
Such simple moments of affection should have been the most natural thing in the world between us, and yet, even here in this place where it would mean the most, neither of us could bring ourselves to make the attempt. Idealistic boys become cynical men, gruff women become grouchy codgers and no one is able to stop that progression.
‘You’ve come down in the world, Master,’ I observed.
Hazidanharrumphed. ‘It’s not so bad here, actually. They let me bring my books– not that I needed to, as it turned out.’ She headed into the darkness, heavy on that left foot, but moving quickly nonetheless. ‘You can find almost any text ever written somewhere in the endless halls of the Infernal demesne, if you’re willing to look hard enough.’
‘And pay the price for it,’ I said, jogging to catch up with her.
‘These amateurs? I’ve haggled with street urchins selling stolen fruit who were tougher negotiators than these diabolics and demoniacs and whoever.’
The shadows began to change as we walked through them, or perhaps my own senses were acclimatising. Now I could see that we were in a wide corridor with an arched ceiling stretching further than my eyes could see. I peered into the open doors we passed: here was a bedroom, with a bathing chamber opposite; a dressing room had twenty or more identical white robes, their only ornamentation a simple gold fringe, hanging on a rail– Hazidan was wearing just such a robe. But most of the rooms were filled with shelves packed with books, each with a desk, a low table or a small reading couch crammed in, upon which were piled even more volumes.
Hazidan got a little smile on her face as she passed by each miniature library. ‘All in all,’ she said, with a contented sigh, ‘a perfectly reasonable place to spend one’s retirement.’
‘I recently noticed several thousands of the damned who’d perhaps argue differently.’
Hazidan’s jaw set in that way that told me I’d just pissed her off, which was to say I’d expressed an unfounded philosophical proposition that happened to contradict her own views.
‘“Damned” is such alazyword. It implies victimhood. No one can “damn” anyone else, Cade. Surely I taught you better than that. Do you really not remember the answer to the question I posed earlier?’
‘I’ve forgotten already. Remind me.’
Times like these, she’d usually slap me hard around the head, a gentle reminder that the affection of one’s teacher was in no way protection against their actual teachings. ‘What is the secret name of emptiness?’
The answer wasourselves, of course, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying it out loud. Nothing in either my former or current professions suggested that Hazidan’s almost obsessive convictions about free will were true. Coercion, duress, manipulation, deception– these are the means by which those who desire our moral downfall trick us into it.
She threw up her hands as if we were back in her classroom at the justiciars’ training hall and she’d just wasted hours trying to get me to appreciate such a simple axiological precept. ‘All these years and youstillcan’t get that one lesson through your skull. . .’
‘And here’s me thinking I took your lessons too much to heart, given you convinced me to betray my oaths to the justiciars and got me excommunicated by the Lords Celestine.’
Hazidan stopped, turned and stared at me through those empty eye sockets. They made it even harder than usual not to shy away from her stare. ‘You convinced yourself, Cade– all I did was point out the obvious inconsistencies in our mission. That you were unable to reconcile them wi—’
‘You were myteacher!’ I shouted, trying to push her away from me. It was like trying to shove the hindquarters of a war horse. ‘You were supposed to help strengthen my faith so that I could stand shoulder to shoulder with our brethren! One day you were praising me, telling me I might even become a paladin like you, then the next, you started twisting everything you’d ever told me, until I doubtedeverything!’
Standing in some forsaken corner of Hell, shouting at a woman who had apparently consigned herself by choice to the place most Mortals fear more than any other, it occurred to me that perhaps I was carrying more pain since our parting than I’d realised.
But Hazidan stood there, weathering my tirade with the same preternatural calm that had made her so formidable, both as an Auroral magistrate and a holy warrior.
‘Are you done?’ she asked, but she didn’t bother to wait for an answer before resuming progress down this apparently endless hallway.
We passed yet more libraries, but there were other rooms, too, including a second bedroom. I wondered why Hazidan would need a second bedroom– perhaps after a hard day’s reading, she sometimes found walking all the way back to the bedroom at the start of the corridor too onerous? Or maybe on occasion she was allowed house guests here in the Infernal demesne.
A small study caught my eye. It wasn’t another of the little libraries; the bookshelf in the corner didn’t have room for much more than a dozen volumes, and there were no books piled on either the small desk or the single chair.
But the room that stopped me in my tracks had nothing in it but a small square carpet in the middle of the stone floor and a meditation vase suspended from the ceiling above a bronze basin. I didn’t need to examine the huge glass vase to know there’d be a tiny hole in the bottom, just big enough to allow a single drop of water to pass through every second or so. It would make a tiny sound when it struck either the bronze or the water that would gradually pool there. Glorian Justiciars would confine themselves for days on end so they could contemplate particularly thorny moral dilemmas.
I’d stopped, because in all my time with her, I had never seen Hazidan make use of an anchorite chamber.
‘What is this place you’ve built, Master?’ I asked. ‘What are you doing spending your last days in the Infernal demesne? And don’t give me any more nonsense about this being a pleasant place to spend your retirement. It’s not. It’s fuckingHell. It’s the last place any sane Glorian Justic—’
Oh shit.
