Chapter CXI: Malebolge Pt. 5 [Sowers of Discord and Falsifiers]
10 April 1610
There was a pound of sand that erupted into the air as Renault dropped onto the brown and golden heap while growling loudly. Madeleine watched, for a moment, terrified, as her uncle threw the offending rattlesnake to the far corner of the chamber and immediately got back up.
“My hearing is not what it used to be,” Renault was quick to quip dusting himself off before almost diving once again as another rattlesnake leaped from its concealed position near the mounds of sand around them. Coiled in camouflage from the colouration of the ground, the snakes were also masked from detection by the shimmering tintinnabulation of the sand hour-glasses palisading around the group.
Willem and Raul were similarly fending off striking vipers from the rear with their weapons while Riku and Father Valerio flanked the group on either side. From the side, one of the snakes attempted to reach for Madeleine's head only to be surprised by the flap of the young lady's parasol deflecting its fangs harmlessly and shoving it away.
“Isn't there a safer way around?” Madeleine asked her uncle while her eyes darted on either side of their narrow walkway.
“Believe it or not, braving through this is the fastest way... the safe route would have taken too long,” Renault replied while using his boot to shove another one to the far sandy heaps. “We would have been safer the other way, but I know we could handle this--” Renault said quickly while hopping over another strike and sweeping it away with his rapier.
Eventually, the corridor was in sight and all took refuge inside the doorway before shutting the entrance behind them as securely as they could. All of them took a moment to rest against the cooler atmosphere of the corridor. “Let's pass some water around,” Carmen said while trying to catch her breath. She and Father Valerio helped with the packs and started distributing the various skins.
Madeleine thanked her aunt and drank some of the now warmed liquid but she at least was able to relax her parched throat. Another moment of rest, she thought to herself. “We're almost there at least,” Riku attempted to encourage the others. Only Willem seemed to smile at those words. Madeleine watched that boy's expression with some mystery. Maybe, she thought to herself, she hadn't really thought about his return as much as she should have. He's really alive, she thought to herself like it was the first realization.
“Seems like we're missing some water,” Father Valerio noticed as he went through the luggage.
“Ah, sorry about that, I dropped mine near the beginning after that whole ordeal,” Willem said with a dismissive smile.
“You don't have to act so tough,” Madeleine wanted to say to him as she stared at the side of that young man's face. She took a moment to look down at her own reservoir of water and gave it a little bit of thought. When we get out of this... she pondered in her mind. She allowed herself a little smile before raising her eyes and holding up her water in Willem's direction.
“Here, you can share mine,” were the words-- but not hers. Raul had unceremoniously dropped his skin onto Willem's lap.
“As ungrateful as always!” Willem teased quietly before uncorking the top and sloshing some water into his mouth. Madeleine was slow but deliberate in recoiling her hand back to herself and turning away. Before her eyes divested of Willem's drinking figure, she saw the young Dutchman pass a glance in her direction.
“Anyway,” Willem said after a swallow, “what's next?”
For a moment, there was no answer and Madeleine looked up towards her uncle wondering why he was not responding only to find that he was looking back at her already. Turning to her left quickly, she also realized that Willem had been looking in her direction. “The Bolge of the False Counselors,” she said quickly; the rest seemed automatic so that her eyes would have time to fix on Willem's inquisitive look. “They used their tongues to bring men to do foolish or evil things and so in death they're damned to be engulfed in flame and forever be parodies of firey tongues... flaming figures that can be barely recognized; and, through my uncle's reading, they wanted to be the light to guide people in life and so they are forever damned to be painful lamps for eternity.
“As knowledgeable as always,” Willem complimented her with a smile that half mooned along the side of his face. Madeleine wanted to say something in return but Willem was already standing. “I guess we shouldn't waste anymore time then.”
---
Renault had told them to be cautious when entering the next bolgia and had instructed them to stay near the corridor as he stepped through. The entire floor platform seemed to respond to his steps as he entered and immediately, fountains of flame began to erupt from small portals in the floor.
“The same method in the seventh circle with the flames and sand is at work here,” Renault began to explain, “except this is much more controlled; the floor panels trigger the fuel so it's not wasted when no one is around.”
He had to raise his voice as he spoke since the curling fireballs tore a sound through the air like a miniature hurricane. The corridor flashed intense measures of gold and white and the very air looked like it was melting in the intense heat rising from each plume.
“I'm guessing this is another one of your light imagery tricks,” Riku offered, “we're not supposed to pay attention to the light of the flames and look for some hidden message, perhaps?”
“You would be correct,” Renault said, “but you'd also be dead. It's true that there is secret writing on the walls if you ignore the flames, but those would point you to the wrong way out. You have to remember that these are false counselors, people who abused their speech to make you listen to the wrong things. The trick then is not that they illuminate the wrong things, but that they're hiding a more subtle
sound.” It was then that he motioned for them to press their ears against the stonework of the floor.
“I hear tapping,” Madeleine said suddenly.
“There's a mechanism that signals out a simple numeric cipher that tells us where to go next,” Renault explained matter of factly before motioning them around several of the flames to a blank space in the wall. Pressing his hand against it, the stonework gave way to the next corridor.
“Having all that fuel in so many of the levels seems very dangerous,” Willem said offhandedly.
“It is,” Renault replied more softly as they entered into the quiet of the descending hall, “but it also serves a double purpose. The fuel is part of the fail-safe mechanism.”
“What would that be, Señor de Fronsac?” Father Valerio asked as they eased their way down the incline.
“It's part of the way this whole cavern was designed,” Madeleine answered for her uncle, “a way that one cannot simply excavate a path through. If the structure of any circle is compromised, the entire place collapses. I suppose that my uncle means that the fuel for the flames helps to ensure that a complete collapse occurs.”
“Be careful,” Renault interrupted, “We're about to hit the Schismatic bolge.”
“What's the punishment in this one?” Willem asked.
Madeleine explained: “Schismatics split people apart and so in death they must walk the bolge while a demon with a large sword cuts them according to their crime. As they walk, their bodies regenerate only to be cut again once they reach the demon. Muhammad and Ali are chief among the religious schismatics, for example. Muhammad is cut from chin to loin and Ali is cut from chin to forehead signifying Dante's interpretation that between these two men is the total schism Islam has caused in the world. There are also sowers of political discord and then, lastly, are the sowers of discord between kinsmen of which there was one most harrowing example in the
Inferno of Bertran de Born who fomented rebellion between father and son in France. For that, just as he separated the head of the family from the son, so is his head severed for all eternity and he carries it around like a lantern...”
When Madeleine finished her explanation, a soft, contemplative silence hung over the dirty air. Only the flicker of the torches reminded each one of the passages they had just exited from as they entered the next ring. The bolge there was dark-- devoid of the light of previous passageways. What surprised them was the lack of any special ornamentation along the circuit-- only a sterile work of stone curving on either side.
“It seems rather--” Riku was about to say when Renault threw a large stone from the corridor onto the floor to their left. Immediately, a blade swung into the ring from the space in between the square bricks and slammed the thrown stone against the wall carving a massive gash through its center before retreating into the floor.
“It would take quite a while to experiment which side of the walkway triggers the trap,” Renault explained, “but for the trained eye, you can interpret some signals on the wall, ceiling, and floors. The signs are rudimentary enough once you understand them,” Renault pointed, “that one signifies a cross and the other a crescent. Naturally walking on the correct choice will not trigger the trap. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of such an exploration so we'll take the shortcut.”
“And the next one is the final bolge, right?” Raul asked while carefully following Renault's trail.
“Yes,” Renault explained, “the bolge of the falsifiers. They lied, counterfeited, and did all the other things that deprived society of its ability to stay together and so they live in the antithesis of society. In the last bolge, each shade turns against each other, cannibalises each other, as well as suffers from every kind of disease. It's there that, since lying destroys the body of a society, their bodies are both destroyed and deprived of any society with other shades except that of destruction.”
---
Lieutenant Drescher's apartment occupied an inconspicuous corner of one of the southern harbours of Constantinople. Having previously been a warehouse for incoming trading vessels, it was mostly bare on the inside although his subordinates had busily worked partitions into the large building to do most of their operational work independent of the Sultan's palace.
A concession to the visitors, it housed most of their equipment including large machinery and wheeled contraptions, but it also made ample space on the dock-side for living quarters; a view of the Sea of Marmara uninterrupted by the busy work of subordinates. A taste of retirement, Lieutenant Drescher assured himself as he looked out the dirty window onto the pristine view of water gently swaying the vessels gently before they reach the safety of the U shaped harbours. The melting sun was in his periphery as well, contributing a fraction of her luminescence to the sprites in the water.
This is what he had hoped to accomplish; a nice little home by the sea free from the troubles of the mission he'd been sent there to accomplish along with so many others. His Oberst was already dead from old age and the chain of command progressed through the young men who turned into older versions of themselves in shorter time than they had expected. This generation was now more calculating, more abreast in the dealings of this older world. They did not have the same bright eyed enthusiasm as some of the newer men-- especially the one who was to replace him.
Unfortunately, he thought to himself with a sigh that barely fogged the already stained window, if what this replacement was saying was true, then perhaps it might take longer for him to enter into the retirement he so hoped for. If it was true that they finally had some solid indications that the Others were already among them and that the Turks and Greeks before them had been dealing with the issue for a while now, it might change the entire scenario.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and Drescher turned quickly from the window and unlocked his hands from behind his back. “Come in,” he said in their native German. The slanting of the sun beveled the room into a hazy shadow with a dull underscore of vermilion. As soon as he entered, the man gave a cursory salute before approaching Drescher's desk.
“All the information is here,” the man said passing a dossier containing crumbled and aging manuscripts. “From the time of the Byzantines to what I could gather out of the paperwork from the Turks, it's all here. All I would need is to verify it with our records on the matter.”
Drescher took the dossier carefully and leafed through the gathered research. His old eyes squinted at the writing, but he was erudite enough to understand the cryptic ciphers and the hastily drawn figures. “There's no doubt... all down to this Leyla woman's poison weapons... it all points to the fact that they're already here.”
“I came to that same conclusion as well,” the man pointed out while continuing to stand in attention.
“Good work,” Drescher finally said as he straightened himself up from reading the material. He handed the dossier back while rolling open one of the drawers form his desk and procuring a metallic object from within. “Here's the vault key, Henrich will tell you the combination if you show this to him.”
“Thank you sir”, the man said quickly while gingerly tendering the key. Drescher turned his back on the man and faced the sea once more. Back to his thoughts--
“Is there something else?” Drescher asked suddenly realizing the man was still in the room.
“One more thing, sir,” was the response. As soon as Drescher turned around, however, the old German felt the heavy blow of a dagger sliding into his gut and a hand clasped over his mouth. He gasped immediately and could feel the drowning metal of his own blood clogging up his breath.
“Mey--” was the bubbling voice attempting to speak spewing speckles of red between the opposing man's fingers.
“I'm afraid I'm not really Christoph Meyer,” the man said to him in a quick hiss that was punctuated by the slow twist of the dagger in Drescher's stomach. “But thank you anyway for your key, Herr Drescher, I'll make sure that all your research about the Others is put to good use.” The man did not give Drescher as a moment to respond as another painful twist racked the old man's frame.
“Who--” was the angry gargle of blood.
“My name is Alvaro de Guzman,” was the reply widening the dying gaze from the Wolf underneathy. “A friend of yours sent me. A fellow German, you could say. Cardinal Lamprecht wanted me to deliver his regards.”
“He should be dead!” Drescher's voice sizzled so violently that some of the blood from the mouth sprayed between the man's grip and onto the assassin's face.
“In some ways he prefers it that way,” the assassin replied, “they don't call him the
Gespentskardinal for nothing. Your little underlings in Madrid were too naïve to think that a Cardinal of the Silent Room could not be so easily betrayed and walked right into our ambush. Perhaps they were just too amazed to be in the very Room where the fate of the world is decided. I'm no traitor, Herr Drescher; My father was treacherous and died betraying my country, but that is why he is probably frozen in the river of Cocytus right now... As for you... I'll send you to the bolge of the schismatics where you belong.” A final upward pull of the dagger and Drescher sucked in his last breath.
After securing the key in his pocket, the man hurriedly shoved the paperwork into his jacket while using a cloth to wipe the stains of blood away. He exited the room calmly but nearly struck out with his weapon once more when he heard a voice to his left. “Alvaro,” a man called out. The recent assassin placed his weapon back into hiding and exhaled as he stealthily eased his way to the man addressing him from down the hall.
“Father Julio, I told you not to follow me in here,” Alvaro replied with some concern, “You should be with his Excellency.”
“You still call me 'Father Julio' even after all these years,” the older one teased, “Either way, I was a bit nervous,” the man added, “and that Lieutenant Drescher seemed to have dismissed most of the guards from this wing-- he must have realized the importance of what you were going to tell him so I snuck in without much difficulty.”
“In any case,” Alvaro insisted, “Make sure you stay with Andronikos; once I get the material from the vault it will be your turn to lead us back into the old Silent Room... once they find Drescher dead they'll--”
“I understand,” Father Julio acknowledged, “this isn't over yet.”
“It's not finished yet!” Pablo screamed like a madman as he thrashed his body against the heavy armour of the two men assigned to drag him into the awaiting transport.
“Gag him,” Carlos de Guzman ordered his men while rubbing his shoulder-- the spot where Pablo had knicked his armour with a desperate bullet, “he's making too much noise.”
“No!” Pablo screamed, “Wait! Wait! Don't you want to know about
them?!” the man desperately screamed turning his head painfully towards Carlos who walked behind the squad.
Carlos was quick to raise his hand to halt the ball gag from being applied. “Talk quietly and maybe I'll let you speak.”
“Maybe that's not such a good idea,” Captain DeWitt tried to say but Carlos ignored the senior soldier and stepped closer to the two guards as they continued to walk the prisoner down.
“You have to let me finish... I have to see
her again...” Pablo began ranting but this time more pacifically. Carlos did not seem amused as he furrowed his brow at the madness.
“I'll show you where to find someone who will help give you all the answers. I'll take you to ZIO!” and here Pablo's eyes and forehead distended vertically so much that even Carlos thought the man's eyes would roll backwards.
Carlos stopped walking. The strange man from the television before, he recalled. The one that had threatened to bomb Beijing. “You know where we can find this Zio?”
“Oh yes!” Pablo pleaded as the guards moved him further away from the stationary Carlos. “Let me show you, please!”
Carlos looked down towards the dim hallway floor of the hotel. It was not something that Rodrigo had told him to do, but this was his chance to take some initiative-- it was a chance to further validate the forgiveness granted to him; to show everyone once and for all that he was not a traitor...
Chapter CXII: The Traitors (coming soon)
Also, yes, the last few seconds are a long fade out from the last note of the last piece. Thanks for listening. 
