Prospero in Hell by L. Jagi Lamplighter Read Free Book Online

anyone sssaysss otherwissse.”
    Mab and I stared at each other glumly, the condemning hanger in Mab’s hand. Water dripped. The window that we had wiped clean grew steamy again.
    “Pretty much answers that question,” Mab muttered finally. He put thegolden hanger back and shut the secret door. “Now, we know your brother wasn’t just babbling back at St. Thomas. That accursed Unicorn Hunter’s cloak Mr. Theophrastus destroyed back in Vermont, the one we found at the thrift store? It really was the Harebrain’s.”
    Despite the heat of the room, I felt chilled, as if I were again staked down to a stone bier during a thunderstorm while the Unicorn Hunters hid beneath their camouflage cloaks, waiting to ambush my Lady, when She came to rescue me.
    “What’s it mean?” I whispered hoarsely. “Why would he own such a thing?”
    “It means I was right. The Harebrain’s up to no good,” Mab replied. Grabbing my arm, he backed us both rapidly toward the door. “Let’s go, Ma’am. I just saw something bright fluttering near that flowering plant in the corner. Didn’t Harebrain say something about a poisonous butterfly?”
    “Nicssse ssseeing you,” called the hamadryad as we retreated.

CHAPTER THREE
     

     

The Book of the Sibyl
     
    “Whoa!” Mab cried, as he had stepped through the next archway. “By the West Wind! It’s the War between Heaven and the Elves!”
    A vast, elaborate bas-relief spread across the black marble walls of an enormous ballroom. As I came through the arch and down the two steps that separated the ballroom from the chamber with the great hearth, Mab pointed up at the nearest figure on my left.
    “There’s Metratron, Herald of the Big Guy! Jeepers! I can make out the individual constellations on all twelve pairs of his wings. This is some piece of work! Who carved this?”
    “My brother Mephistopheles. I recognize his style.” I surveyed the wall. “This must be the Mural Hall the note on the golden hanger referred to.”
    The sculpture began at the far left with the awesomely magnificent figure of the Metratron, Herald of God, towering above his angelic hosts. His halo, shaped like the spiral of the Milky Way galaxy, brushed the top border of the twenty-five-foot wall. Beneath him stretched the nine orders of angelic servants: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. My brother had portrayed each successive rank as shorter than its predecessor, so that while the Seraphim, with their nine pairs of wings, came to the shoulder of God’s Herald, the single-winged Angels reached only to the height of his waist. Yet, these last were taller still than the faery knights on their elvish steeds who engaged the angelic hosts in battle.
    A parchment Post-It, stuck to Metratron’s wing, read: THIS IS A WALL I MADE TO REMIND ME OF STUFF. I CARVED IT FOR MY HOUSE IN ENGLAND LONG AGO AND HAD IT TRANSPORTED HERE TO CANADA ONE BLOCK AT A TIME BY
OREADS.
I PROMISED THE EARTH SPIRITS SOMETHING IN RETURN. DON’T REMEMBER WHAT, BUT I HOPE I KEPT MY WORD.
    The bas-relief scrolled around the entire chamber. The War between Heaven and Faery was followed by a portrayal of the Faery Revel, the Ride of the Faeries on All Hallow’s Eve, and the Faery Tithe to Hell. The River Lethe ran down the very center of the back wall, dividing the celestial and terrestrial from the infernal.
    To the right of the river, Lilith, Queen of Air and Darkness and the original despoiler of mankind, sat enthroned, reigning over an Orgy of Her Servants, the
lilim,
the
ouphe,
and the evil
peri
. This debauchery was followed by the horrors of the Nine Circles of Hell. Fanged barghests pursued the shades of Limbo. Incubi and succubi tortured carnal sinners, while gruesome bat-winged fiends whipped the Wrathful and Sullen. The Lord of the Flies gloated over Tantalus and other gluttons, while the slothful slept beneath the outstretched wings of drowsy Belphegor. Abbadon, the