He was now more than twice as large as I was. An enormous belly hung over his knees, and he leered down at me from near the ceiling. “You can’t bargain for the Lady Maria. She sold herself to the devil.”
“One can always bargain with the devil,” I said with as much confidence as I could. I was moving back now toward the points set out in the Diplomatica Diabolica. But I wondered how I could ever have imagined the negotiations would be straightforward.
“A soul for a soul, of course,” said the demon in deep, resonant tones. “But why should the devil make any bargains for your soul when it already belongs to him?”
“I do not offer my soul,” I said formally in the Hidden Language. “Besides,” I added firmly, “my soul does not belong to the devil.” The black despair in the pit of my stomach did not believe that, but maybe the demon did. “I offer only my life.”
“A life for a soul is not a good bargain.”
“It is if the soul isn’t really yours to begin with!” I stopped myself. This was not the prescribed negotiating language, but I did not think I had made any serious mistakes so far. “Binding negotiations!” I remembered then to say.
The demon nodded his enormous head. He once again had grown horns.
I put my hand over my eyes, visualizing the page in the book. “First and most importantly, her intention was never evil. A soul is judged on intent, and if you took her soul you took it on the flimsiest grounds. Secondly!” as the demon seemed about to interrupt. “She may have gained some advantages for herself, but she brought no evil to anyone else.”
“She nearly killed the king,” said the demon with another leer.
“No, you nearly killed the king. She has never wished any harm to anyone.”
The demon did not answer. Taking his silence for agreement, I pushed desperately on. “Her soul may be yours, but only on the slimmest technicality. Therefore!” I paused to make sure I had the words absolutely right before I spoke. “I have come to offer you the following bargain. You shall release the Lady Maria’s soul and return at once without it to hell. Before you go, you can take my life, but my soul must be judged on its own merits.”
“But I like it here in Yurt,” said the demon with what would have been petulance in a smaller being.
The last of my strength gathered itself into fury. If the demon was able to delay for only a few more moments, I would throw myself at his feet and promise anything in return for my life, and he knew it. “Binding negotiations!” I cried. “You have to answer!”
“All right,” he said with a slow smile. “I would be delighted to take your life. I agree.”
“Formally!” I shouted as the enormous mouth opened, revealing more teeth than ever. “You must agree formally!”
The mouth closed slowly, and long flames darted from the demon’s eyes. “By Satan, by Beelzebub, by Lucifer and Mephistopheles,” he said finally.
This at last was the beginning of the correct terms of a binding engagement. I concentrated as hard as I could through the roaring in my ears, watching for the slightest deviant word.
“In the space of what you in the natural world call one minute, I shall return to hell, not to return to this world unless deliberately summoned by woman or man.”
Joachim had told me, I reminded myself, that he thought that someone who gave his life for another would save his own soul. But I also remembered that he would have to ask the bishop to be sure in a case like this.
“I release, give up, and free the soul of the Lady Maria.”
So far, so good.
“But before I go, you shall die.” The demon’s last semblance of a human form was going fast, but he still had a face that grinned at me. “Agreed and accepted?”
I started to speak, could not, swallowed twice, and tried again. “Agreed and accepted.”
My eyes went black as the enormous mouth full of razor-sharp teeth bent toward my neck. The last thing I heard was the demon’s booming voice. “See you in the afterlife, Daimbert!” The last thing I felt, even before the jaws reached me, was his iron forefinger burning against my chest. It passed effortlessly through skin, muscle, and bone, until it touched my heart, which leaped once more and was still.
III
The afterlife was wet and extremely cold. For a long time, which could have been hours and could have been months-although I expected they reckoned time differently here-there had been nothing but confusion, of colors, black, white, and red, of giant wings, of spaces in which I knew nothing and spaces in which I could hear myself screaming. But now everything was calm and completely dark.
I wondered with mild curiosity where I was. Purgatory, probably, which meant that they hadn’t yet decided what to do with me. At least hell would have to be warmer than lying in purgatory in half an inch of icy water.
Very far away, I heard a door creaking. Maybe they had made up their minds. Steps were coming toward me, deliberate and slow. I turned my head stiffly, interested enough to want to know if it was an angel coming for me or the devil. To my surprise, it was carrying a candle. Somehow I had not expected them to need candles in the afterlife.
I couldn’t see the angel’s or devil’s face behind the candle, although the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open properly may have had much to do with it. I lay back and awaited my fate.
The candle was put down by my head. I could see its light, pink through my closed eyelids. There was a slight creak of joints as the angel or the devil knelt beside me.
He put his hand lightly over my heart, and then I could feel his hair tickle my nose as he put his ear to my mouth. He was so gentle that I decided he had to be an angel.
“Thank God,” said the angel in Joachim’s voice. “He is alive.”
I tried to speak but managed only a faint croak. I moved one of my arms experimentally and was able slowly to reach up to feel a pair of clasped hands and a cheek wet with tears.
Joachim put his arms around me, under my shoulders, and drew me partly up and out of the water. “Can you hear me?” he asked quietly. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”
I tried again to speak. This time I was more successful. “I thought I was dead.”
“I think you were. But it’s no good your coming back from the dead if you then die of pneumonia.”
“Did you ever contact the bishop?” I croaked. It had been my final thought.
“Yes; I asked him to send me an answer here in Yurt, and it was here when I arrived.” He tried to ease me into a sitting position. “He said that if someone lets himself be killed, even killed by a demon, for completely pure reasons, his soul will go straight to heaven.”
Just my luck. Probably the only time in my entire adult life my soul would ever be completely pure, and I’d wasted my chance by coming back to life.
“But how did you get here?” I asked, realizing I had last seen him thirty miles away, in the duchess’s castle.
“When you flew away, I knew at once I had to follow you. As soon as I’d sent the message to the bishop, I went to the stable and took the queen’s stallion-I didn’t give the stable boys a chance to argue. I was here by mid afternoon.” There was a sound that would have been a chuckle from anyone else. “I’ve never been on a horse that went that fast. I found the drawbridge down when I arrived.”
“I’d lowered it.”
“I had intended to rush down into the cellars after you. But great choking clouds of yellow brimstone were billowing out, and vipers and scorpions were crawling up the stairs. It was clear that no one could walk a dozen yards into the cellars and live. I got as far as the door and couldn’t go any further. I knew then the only way I could help you was through prayer.
“So I rubbed down the stallion, went to the dovecot in the south tower for the bishop’s answer, and then to the chapel, and I’ve been there ever since.”