Regrettable,Will heard Salisbury say again, and nodded while Tom lugged a footstool toward the window. “Right. ‘Tis the side we’re on.”
Murchaud held a hand out, ready to pass him through the glass, and Will limped away from Ben’s steadying hand and went.
Act V, scene xi
Of, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele:
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azured arms:
And none but thou shalt be my paramour.
–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act V, scene i
Kit stepped through the light again, but this time there was nothing beyond to support his bare, bruised feet.
He fell.
Into infinite cold and blackness, tumbling hopelessly, arms windmilling, the scream in his throat vanishing into silence as it passed his lips, his fingers freezing so they might shatter and–
Lucifer caught him by the wrist, pulled him close, cradled him in the warm snowfall of wings. Breath hissed into Kit’s lungs, the frozen tears melting on his cheeks. “Christ!” he wheezed. “Christos!”
«Kepler,» Satan answered, and flung his wings wide. He held Kit’s hand in his strong, perfect fingers, though, so that Kit scrolled out alongside him like a ribbon let flap in the wind – but Kit could feel no wind pressing at him as they fell. They tumbled in preternatural calm, or perhaps Kit’s initial impression had been wrong, and they merely floated like puffs of thistledown in the air.
Except that what surrounded them was blackness, velvet and complete between the pricked‑out diamonds of a thousand million stars, and they swam among those stars like dolphins sounding the deeps. “Strange fish,” Kit said, and shook his head. “Kepler. The German astronomer.”
«Aye,» Lucifer answered, and Kit could hear the pleasure in his “voice.” I’ve passed a test?«This is his universe, my love, as before I showed thee Ptolemy’s. Is’t not lovely?» His hand tightened on Kit’s, squeezing the iron rings around Kit’s fingers.
The poet winced in pain, but Lucifer took no notice. Rather, he lifted his right hand to point. «See Mars?»
A racing red pinpoint, a droplet, a globe. Kit focused on it and grinned in dumb wonder as his eyes seemed to adapt, his focus grow closer. He saw veils of mist and shining white glaciers on the surface of the round ochre world, and two moons no bigger than afterthoughts tumbling like puppies through the red planet’s sky. “Oh, Lucifer,” he said. “Which is the truth, then, my lord? This, or what thou didst show me before?”
«They are both true,» the Devil answered. «A11 stories are true. But this story is becoming more true than the other. Look thee; there is thine earth.»
Kit blinked through watering eyes. The soft blue‑and‑white sphere spun like a top far beneath them. He could see the hurtling globe of the moon arcing about it, and a smaller body sharing Earth’s path that seemed to play a flirtatious dance, approaching and retreating. “What is that?”
«Ah,» Lucifer answered. «She’ll not be discovered for four hundred years. They shall name her Cruithne when they do. A moonlet, a captured wanderer fallen into the orbit of some greater, brighter thing.»
“Strange,” said Kit, “that such a thing should have a name, when I myself do not.”
«Dost mourn thy namelessness, who was Christofer Marley?»
And Kit blinked, hanging there among the stars, watching the world spin like a top with his fantastically powerful vision. And thought of Will saying that he had never had time to tell Amaranth about the oaks.
«I could protect thee. Take thee from that place where they have thee so sorely imprisoned. Save thy life.»
“Aye,” Kit said, tugging his aching fingers firmly out of Lucifer’s grip. He floated, hugging himself, and took a miraculous breath of nothingness. “I’ve been lucky at the brink of death before–”
Lucifer chuckled like breaking glass. «So say you.»
“Thou sayest otherwise?”
It was a spectacular thing, to see an angel shrug. «The blade entered your brain, who was Christofer Marley. It broke through bone and severed the great artery above and behind the eye. You died.»
“But I–”
«You died.»
He would not let Lucifer see him tremble. “The Devil asks me to believe him.”
The Devil… winked. «The Lord works in mysterious ways. When he works at all.»
And Kit, quite suddenly, saw through him. He swallowed. How have I been so blind so long?“But couldst protect me, Lightbringer?”
«Lightborn, aye. I never liked that role so well as the others thou didst grant me.» Lucifer smiled, that glorious expression that turned his crown of shadows into the gentle darkness of a moonlit night.
Kit looked up, regarding the serpent for a long, long moment before he answered. “What sort of apples are you peddling this time, old snake?”
“The same old apples every time,” Amaranth answered, her hair twining out of the shadows around her face, her heavenly blue eyes gone the flat color of steel. Kit forced himself to watch the transformation, clenching his fists until blood broke around his rings. The image lasted only a moment, and then the twisting tail was wings, the crown of snakes become a crown of shadows once again, and Kit’s breast ached with the beauty of the angel who reached to take his crimsoned hands.
“Oh, yes. Thou always wert the teacher, wert thou not? The seducer with truths, the bestower of knowledge and power. The rebel condemned to torment. Mankind’s scourge and seducer, warden and guiding star,” Kit said. “The serpent and the apple. The gift of terrible knowledge. The light‑bringer, the fire‑bringer. I know thy name, my lord.”
«I have many names, my love.»
Kit drew a breath that hurt. “Prometheus.”
«A11 stories are one story.» Lucifer said, and drew Kit–unresisting–close, and kissed him with a lover’s passion. «Come now love, and I shall free thee from thy prison, and thou shalt dwell with me.»
The kiss was a brand on Kit’s mouth before he pulled away, and he felt the wild tumult of Mehiel, within. He reached for poetry, and could not find his own, but there was other verse would serve. Kit drew breath and quoted his old friend Sir Walter Raleigh into Satan’s face– “If all the world and love were young, and truth in every shepherd’s tongue, these pretty pleasures might me move to live with thee and be thy love. ”
And the devil laughed. «Doth thy shepherd lie to thee, Sir Poet? It is the way of shepherds. Lying creatures, the more so when they talk of God.»
“Father of lies,” Kit answered, with a shrug.
«But all my lies are Truth. Dost love me, Kit?»
Kit edged away from the angel, and found his back scraping the rough damp wall of the oubliette. Dirt moved under Kit’s feet, a transformation sudden enough to dizzy him. Lucifer’s halo filled the grim little room with light, and he seemed suddenly more beautiful than ever. Something fragile and almost mortal, unreal, outlined against the sweating stone.
“How could I ever love anything else, once having been loved of thee? I can’t comprehend thy logic, Father of lies. Both ends against the middle. Like a two‑headed serpent devouring itself. Christ. What canst thou hope to obtain?”
Lucifer smiled only, and in the sadness of that smile Kit knew the answer. “Oh. For the love of God.” Oh, he if right: we are more alike than not, my lord Morningstar and I.
«For the love of God. One way or another. Dost judge me? Begrudge me?.» Lucifer beckoned, cupping feathers brushing the stone.