6. The Invisible Cities of Hêla

by Troy Whitlock

The Lord of Hêla stood on a high balustrade overlooking the Plain of Ash. Its blackness stretched out into the distance, as far as the amber glow of the underworld could penetrate. It marked the very edge of his empire and the terminus of all things. Gusts of hot, sulfur air continually blew across the plain, sweeping through the capital and out into the expanse of the world. He traced the lines on his hand, as he imagined his legions marching out from the palace, following the ashwind to the furthest frontiers of damnation.

It had been thirty six hundred years since he began his reign. Compelled to remain on his throne, the Lord of Hêla could not experience the infinite variety of his realm except vicariously through the rumors and stories brought by the infernal emissaries who constantly flowed ashward into the city. Benign spirits and maligenii, restless deluders and calumniators, terrible furies with festering carbuncles, all came to bring their tribute or to beseech the Lord’s intercession on matters great and frivolous.

Most recently, a young Whisperer had arrived in the capital. He was from a distant enclave — an area populated with villages resembling termite mounds, carved from tufa and scattered amidst an oily swamp. His name was Marco and he was a mapmaker. This was an odd thing for a young Whisperer to be and he brought neither tribute nor grievance.

The Lord of Hêla turned to face his guest. He regarded Marco as he would any Whisperer. He enjoyed listening to their wordplay and appreciated their utter devotion to the Nine Rules of Deception, but he did not warrant their concerns worthy of serious consideration.

“The surface world does not exist, or no longer exists or never existed,” he told Marco. “Do you know an ‘irresistible promise’ when you hear one?” he asked.

Marco removed a scroll from his bag and began to unfurl a hand-drawn map. “If you’ll permit me, great and wise Lord, I will try in vain to describe what I have seen on my journey. I believe that the tales of Massina are true, because they are not as unbelievable as the things I have seen with my own eyes.”

Pointing to a dark splotch on the edge of the scroll, Marco began.

“Here at the Great Pit of Tartarus, this is where I first heard the story.”

+++

After two days of walking leeward from Zagros, Marco’s feet were tired. The gallu who lived in this area had a very strict taboo against flying. Marco did not want his eyes replaced with hot stones, so he chose to follow an ancient footpath down the mountain. As he skirted the Great Pit, the depths of which he hoped to some day chart, he arrived at a village built around a group of concentric tumors, great pustules from which flowed rich terpenes.

The history of this town was an eternal torment of invaders, centuries of usurpers, each more powerful than the last and strengthened by the succor of the tumors. One disaster followed another: as soon as the harpy were subdued, the town was invaded by a grim phalanx of gorgons, the gorgons were eventually consumed by a great hydra, when the hydra was finally slain, its corpse erupted into a plague of blood beetles, and the mischief of murderous vermin, who were initially welcomed as they had come to eat the beetles, soon turned on the residents of the town and drove away every last survivor, save one.

The streets were still filled with empty carapaces, but no other signs of life remained. The final resident and custodian, a blind, old Darulk, was sitting on a stone bench contemplating the sound of Marco’s approaching footsteps. Gray and mottled, pockmarked with hundreds of tiny scars, he might have been mistaken for an accursed statue had he not spoken.

“Greetings young Whisperer,” the Darulk had discerned. ”Welcome to Skofnung. Once home to the greatest blademasters of Hêla — now, only home to me.”

“Do you seek the Gate to Massina?” he ventured.

“I am not familiar with the gate you speak of,” replied Marco.

“Oh, well, pardon me then,” he said, almost in disbelief. “Most young Whisperers who pass this way are in search of the gate.” And he turned away from the traveler.

“Please, tell me more of this gate which young Whisperers seek,” Marco implored him.

“No, you are much better off never having heard the stories. I will not be responsible for spreading that heresy any further,” the old one protested. But Marco sensed that he was just being coy.

“If I were to seek the Gate to Massina, do you know where I might find it?”

The Darulk’s withered lips formed a smile as his tentacles uncurled in anticipation. He turned again to face Marco.

“I may… for a price,” he said, holding out his hand.

Marco knew better than to haggle with a Darulk, so he placed a small pouch of coins in the creature’s palm. The Darulk’s face tentacles salivated with greed as he hefted the pouch.

“The gate you seek is three days journey that way,” he told Marco, pointing his tentacle arm in the direction of a distant plateau.

“At the Hour of Impenitence, look ashward along the face of the high steppe. Only at that moment, will the gate be open.”

Marco thanked the Darulk, although he wasn’t sure exactly why. As he departed, Marco could hear the old demon cackling to himself as he emptied the pouch. If there was no gate, Marco determined that he would return to the town and recover his coins.

Far from the shadow of Zagros, Marco was now free to use his wings again, although the relentless ashwinds made flying in a straight line towards the horizon more arduous than simply walking. So he trudged onwards, climbing up the dunes and gliding down the other side. Just as the old beggar had promised, he reached the foot of the butte on the third day.

Curious but uncertain, Marco made camp on a high bluff overlooking the ashward approach to the ravine and waited. On the first night, the Hour of Impenitence came and went. He squinted at the stone face of the plateau and far into the distance, but no gate revealed itself. On the second day, he saw a caravan of travelers approaching from the direction of Avaritia. It can be dangerous on the frontier, so he remained hidden and watched as they scrambled up an arroyo to the summit of the mesa. As the Hour of Impenitence approached, he saw them leap from the lip of the canyon, open their wings and form a murmuration held aloft by the ashwind. He lost his concentration for a moment and when his gaze returned to the plateau, they were gone.

Marco waited patiently for five more days before he saw another soul. This time a single pilgrim trekked the lonely path up the arroyo and out onto a ledge overlooking the pass. Just as before, at the appointed hour, the stranger stepped over the edge and drifted in a lazy spiral down the face of the cliff. Determined not to lose sight of the pilgrim’s path, Marco stood. The stranger stiffened and quickly turned toward Marco’s shadowy outline. Marco was startled by this and crouched back down. Almost as suddenly, the stranger careened directly into the face of the rock and vanished with no visible trace.

The next day Marco gathered his belongings and made his way down the path to the arroyo. He followed it to the ledge and looked down the face of the rock. The ash swirled in a hypnotic pattern and Marco’s body relaxed. He leaned forward. He could feel the heat of the wind below and the updraft of the ashcloud. He spread his wings and stepped off the ledge. He floated on the currents for what seemed like hours. He could feel the pressure of the ash on his skin and the sting of the particles in his eyes. But he did not falter. He knew what he had to do. Finally, at the appointed time, he saw the shape of a gate appear on the wall of the canyon. He willed himself toward it and as he drew closer he could see the lights of a small town just on the other side. He went through.

+++

Marco sat in the darkened corner of “The Sleeping Kukudh” nursing his lager and contemplating what had been revealed to him in the last week — an entire city hidden within the face of a sheer cliff! But the elation of this discovery was subsiding and he was starting to realize that his arrival in Massina was only the beginning of this journey.

Initially, Massina seemed just like any other city in Hêla — a collection of buildings, connected by a series of roads, spread out amongst a set of landmarks. Wandering through its brawling streets, he saw taverns and temples, prisons and palaces, sewers and gardens, just as one might find in Chthoni or Ħal-Saflieni.

After deconstructing the city and then reassembling it piece by piece, substituting lines for roads and names for places, he could hold it in his hands and scrutinize it. The conclusion of this analysis was that in fact Massina was comprised of two half-cities overlaid one on another. A newcomer such as Marco could meander freely between its borders, but he had come to realize that the inhabitants of each territory strictly respected their boundaries and completely ignored the occupants of the conjoined city, in spite of their near perpetual proximity.

Massina was primarily populated by Whisperers and Darulk but there were also many Balor, Milosnitse, and Drudes, as well as an incalculable number of beadols underfoot. Marco learned that some of the residents were immigrants who had arrived in the same manner as he had, while the rest of the population were natives whose ancestors had settled here long ago. But these details did not explain the two halves of the city.

The reason for the split was this: half of the population believed that they lived in the mythical city of Massina, while the other half believed the city was only a phantasm, a chimeric replica. The real Massina, they claimed, existed in a world beyond Hêla and unlike this threadbare town, it was a true wonder to behold. Some even said they had seen it, they had been there, and began raving about blue skies, thunderous applause, forbidden delicacies, and other treasures beyond imagination. However, none could say exactly where it was, or how to get there, or like the old beggar, they presented Marco with an open palm.

A strange creature suddenly entered the tavern and walked directly towards Marco. She looked like an eyeless witch, but was wrapped in the thick chains of a geist and her skin was pitch black, as charred as the ashplains. He did not recognize her family and her presence disturbed him. He knew somehow that she did not belong here. All conversation in the tavern stopped as the customers turned to watch her approach the young Whisperer.

She spoke with a closed mouth, or maybe no mouth at all, but her voice was crisp and pervasive, and it rattled like the ashwind pushing through a thicket of reeds.

“I’ve heard that you seek a pathway out of the city,” she said.

Marco replied, “That is true. Can I offer you…”

She cut Marco off, scolding him loudly “You have found your way to the most fabulous place in Hêla, the mythical city of Massina, and yet you are not satisfied?”

Someone mocked “the most fabulous place in Hêla” and the tavern erupted with hearty laughter.

“Do you really think that if there were a way to leave, this lot of buffoons would still be here?” she asked, gesturing to the onlookers.

The customers began openly heckling her. “Leave the kid alone!”; “We’ve had enough of your gate keeping!”

Undeterred, she continued, “They know leaving the safety of the city is suicide! For thousands of years, demons have tried to dig their way out of here, in search of treasure or a pathway home. The town is surrounded by a twisting labyrinth in every direction. Wandering into those passages is certain death.”

Marco explained, “I am a mapmaker and I will chart the passages so that others might follow.”

The stranger became enraged. She grabbed Marco by the throat and lifted him from his chair. As his feet dangled in the air, she began to squeeze her hand tightly around his neck.

The other customers attempted to intervene, but the stranger seemed to know what they were going to do before they even started to move. She easily parried or dodged their blows and projectiles until she was finally overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers. Marco collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.

Marco

Once he had recovered and his assailant had been removed from the tavern, one of the patrons, a tall Preta with a distended belly, came over to check on Marco.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Yamaduta, Captain of the Expeditionary Society. We are always recruiting new members, particularly those brave enough to adventure beyond the walls of the city. Did I hear you say that you wished to leave?” he asked Marco with an ingratiating smile.

Marco nodded in acknowledgment, still nursing his wounds.

“You must live a charmed life. Not many Whisperers can say they have survived a run-in with a Gatekeeper,” he reassured Marco.

Macro asked with a raspy voice, “A Gatekeeper? What was her problem?”

“Oh, don’t take it personally, boy. She’s not mad at you; she’s mad at herself,” the Preta explained. “She was supposed to keep the demons from ever discovering this place.”

Marco wondered, “But why? What business does a Gatekeeper have in Hêla?”

Yamaduta explained, “She was left behind by the Celestials to guard the key. But she grew too close to a Whisperer, who convinced her that her friends had forgotten about her, that they had left her here alone and were never coming back.”

“Whether that was actually true or not, who can say.” Yamaduta shrugged, “but then one night while the Gatekeeper was sleeping, the Whisperer stole the key and opened the Gate to Massina.”

“Now she tries to convince newcomers that this is the real Massina. We don’t tolerate talk like that here. This is the headquarters of the Expeditionary Society!” he said proudly.

Marco reached into his satchel and retrieved a scroll. Yamaduta leaned over this shoulder and peered in wonder as Marco unfurled a detailed map of the city and hastily scribbled a note next to “The Sleeping Kukudh”.

Yamaduta told him, “I also overheard you say that you were a mapmaker. The Expeditionary Society would be pleased to count such a fortuitous cartographer as one of its members.”

Marco was curious. “Tell me more about this Society; what exactly is it that you do?”

Yamaduta recited a recruitment slogan he had clearly performed many times. “We seek adventure and treasure! But above all else, we seek the legendary City of Massina!”

“You don’t believe that this is the real Massina?”, asked Marco.

Yamaduta spoke in a hushed tone. “This isn’t Massina. It’s the Gate to Massina,” and touched a finger to the side of his nose, a gesture he knew the Whisperer would recognize as meaning “remember who told you the secret”.

He continued in a normal voice. “The Gatekeeper was right to warn you that the tunnels are dangerous. Alas, many of our society members have tried to chart the path, but no one has ever returned with a map.”

“Some of the tunnels go on forever. Many twist and turn in on themselves, intersecting previous tunnels, until you arrive back where you began. Most of them eventually come to a dead end, if you know what I mean.”

He chuckled menacingly and asked, “Can I offer you something to eat? I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Marco raised this hand to his tender throat and shook his head.

He asked Yamaduta, “Then how do you know there is a way through the labyrinth?”

The Preta just smiled. “Many demons have tried to find the way, but only a few have returned to tell the tale. What happened to the rest? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“But,” he continued, “those who return tell such wonderous stories: of a fabulous treasure protected by monstrous creatures, of an ancient sorceress locked inside the high walls of a great fortress, of an endless dungeon thick with deadly tricks and ingenious traps, and of Massina. Some say that it’s a paradise. Others say it’s a hellish nightmare, a place where the damned wander forever, searching for an exit that doesn’t exist.

“If you want to find out for yourself and you’re brave enough to venture into the labyrinth, just follow the ashwind. After all, where do you think all that hot air goes?” He paused and raised one eyebrow for dramatic effect.

He looked at Marco expectantly, as if waiting for an answer but Marco didn’t know what to say and just sat there looking confused.

“Ok. Let me take a step back,” Yamaduta asked, “Where do you think all that hot air comes from?”

Marco knew the answer. “Of course, every school-demon knows. It’s the heat and energy caused by The Absolute, as he struggles to free himself from the heart of damnation.”

Yamaduta nodded and leaned forward, lowering his voice again, “Right. And it has to go somewhere. When The Absolute was imprisoned, the Celestials had to create a way to vent his power and hatred. Otherwise, it would eventually build up like steam in a kettle and BOOM!, there goes Hêla. They cleverly hid the entrance to the vent; but, not so cleverly, left that Gatekeeper behind to guard it from the inside.”

Marco nodded, as he understood what Yamaduta was getting at, “If they left the Gatekeeper inside, then there must be an outside. And if the vent has an entrance, then it must also have an exit.”

+++

The Lord of Hêla was as intrigued by Marco’s stories as he was with the way in which Marco told them, expressing an earnestness that belied the true nature of a Whisperer. The Lord’s ambassadors usually came to warn him of conspiracies and plagues, or else to inform him of newly conquered territories or otherwise impassable rivers of agate and onyx. Whereas, he much preferred hearing of Marco’s travels.

The Lord of Hêla chose to ignore the affairs of state for a time. “Empire be damned!” he bellowed at his ministers when they dared to interrupt him with urgent matters, “Were it to collapse under its own fetid weight, I would care not.” And turning back to Marco, he would smile and nod, “Please, continue.”

So the stories continued for days, as Marco was lost for many long years in the vast dungeons that stretched out from the Gate of Massina. In those eldritch halls, he encountered amazing things; a creature with two heads, a hulking unicorn who walked upright on two legs, a clockwork creature animated by tiny gears and springs that could fly like a bat! He told his host of an entire nation nestled in the infinite transum between two worlds, as one might find a whole civilization of spiders, building their invisible cities in the dark crawl spaces between the floors and walls.

Many of those who originally sought Massina had eventually come to rest in some other place, fatigued with their journey, disillusioned with their vision or simply relieved to have survived some penultimate horror they encountered on the way. Those settlers stopped at the very next village, became entangled with the lives of its residents and, like a fly caught in amber, called it their home forevermore.

Marco unintentionally visited some of these places many times, while other destinations he sought to reconsider but could never find again. Sometimes, he would exit a city from one gate only to reenter it again from another. Stranger still, Marco’s path never deviated, always following the ashwind, always traveling upland, always in a straight line. Still he got turned around, lost, sometimes trapped.

He occasionally passed members of the Expeditionary Society, either coming from the Gate of Massina or returning there. He could tell by the proportion of their remaining limbs which it was. They told him of a great lizard floating upon a golden shikara, in the black waters of Hubur. They spoke of a phantom island in the middle of its waters called Rocabarraigh, a city beneath its waters called Kitezh and the ethereal sound of crystal bells they claimed would guide you there. But mostly they talked of despair, the fear they would never see Hêla again — a privilege for which they would gladly surrender any sized mountain of treasure, should it be theirs to give.

And everywhere there were the beadols, ferrying little bits of gold, jewels and other treasures back and forth through the passages. Some greedy demons attempted to grow rich by selecting a busy crossroad and interdicting the flow of wealth. Marco found evidence of this, little piles of skulls and sometimes stacks of coins, coins he didn’t recognize, tucked away in forgotten regions of the shaft. But eventually the beadols always recovered what they lost, and then some.

Once, during a period of particular desperation, Marco attempted to pursue one hoping they could bring him to the exit of his current befuddlement. Instead, they led him through a tiny passage that he was unable to traverse. The moment he realized that he was stuck and could proceed no further was the precise instant they swarmed him, dozens of beadols quickly relieving him of all his unsecured valuables.

Five days’ travel from the Gate of Massina, there was a town perched atop high stilts of basalt. Its residents either hated the ground so much they couldn’t tolerate being in proximity to it, or they so loved it that they considered it a sacrilege to stand upon. Neither of them tolerated itinerant dirt trotters like Marco, so he moved on.

Another thirteen days following the passage leeward, Marco exited a cavern overlooking a great city. From a distance, it appeared quite opulent with five golden spires, ten silver domes, and in the center of the city was an enormous windmill churned by the ashwind.

But once inside the city’s gates, its appearance reminded Marco of skeletal remains covered in tattered clothes. A sprawling pipeworks stretched out from the windmill in all directions, wrapping itself around trestles and over roads, through pumping stations and into the home of every resident. In fact, their homes had no walls, or ceilings or floors, only a forest of pipes and fittings, smeared with soot and grease, and draped loosely with ashworn scraps of cloth.

Half the residents believed that the supply of water was perpetually near exhaustion and only used it for the greatest of necessities. When they did, they were contrite, mournful or bitter, and sometimes they even lashed themselves. The other half wasted the water gleefully (but in secret), believing this was the only way to replenish the supply.

After Marco found a passage through the pipes, he traveled for ten days across the mouth of a mammoth limestone grotto, where he arrived at a precipice between two steep mountains. Hanging between them, stretched across the void and held aloft by a series of ropes and cables, was the city of Narakis.

Everything in the city of Narakis, its homes, shops, public buildings and parks, were all suspended from these cables, hanging down below, clinging to strands of hemp or wire, but also connected together to form an enormous net, a support structure that protected the city by evenly distributing the weight of its load.

The precipice was several hundred feet deep and at the bottom there was a river of lava, almost always calm, but from time to time, when stones were dislodged and the magma was stirred, a tongue of fire would rise up to lick at the city’s tender underbelly. The fires never lasted very long because they were easily extinguished by the water that the residents threw down from their houses.

However, the citizens of Narakis had two very different sets of opinions about what to do when the fires rose up from the magma. Half the residents were skeptical that there was any real danger and considered efforts to douse the flames as a waste of valuable water. The other half feared that firestorms would sweep through the city and so disconnected themselves from the mutual support network in an effort to stem the spread of the flames. The city periodically collapsed from a combination of a few small fires and massive structural failures. Most of the residents perished in these disasters, but there were always more pilgrims arriving at the Gate of Massina.

Marco noticed this same maddening dichotomy repeated within every one of the hundreds of villages and towns he would come to visit in his search for the passage through the Padmavyuha. The residents of each city were fanatically devoted to one of a pair of contradictory belief systems; the legend of Massina is a true fact or a duplicitous lie, the earth beneath our feet is holy or anathema, the water we need to live is almost exhausted or endlessly abundant, the fire that warms our homes is totally harmless or spells our certain doom.

In every case, Marco felt himself being pressured to take a position, choose a side and adhere to the local customs and traditions. Because he could not arrive at a conclusion without considerable mapping and thoughtful contemplation, he felt compelled to keep moving on, always upland, with the ashwind.

+++

On the last day of his audience in the palace, Marco arrived to find the Lord of Hêla seated at a chessboard. The chessmen were carved from huge pieces of polished bone and obsidian. They were arranged in an unusual pattern, but one which Marco found vaguely familiar. His host beckoned Marco to join him at the chessboard and to finish his tale.

The Lord of Hêla did not necessarily believe everything that Marco had told him but as the Whisperer described his final, unsuccessful expedition to find the passage to Massina, the Lord listened intently, with greater anticipation and curiosity than he had shown on any previous day. There was melancholy and relief visible on the Lord’s face, as Marco described relinquishing his quest and returning to the borders of Hêla, his journey ashward and his eventual arrival in the capital city.

The Lord of Hêla then thanked Marco for his marvelous fiction and told the Whisper that he could not recall ever having heard a more fantastically detailed lie. The Lord proclaimed that Marco was a prince among demons and promised that his name would become synonymous with prevarication.

Marco protested. His story was neither a ruse nor a confabulation. Marco claimed that he had given a candid and accurate account of his travels.

His host’s mood suddenly changed and he turned on Marco. “I can not decide if you are so self-deluded as to think I would believe you or so self-important as to think you could fool me.

“Now, I shall provide the details of a city and you will tell me if it exists as I have described it,” the Lord snarled and bared his fangs.

Pointing his boney finger at a jagged rook at the corner of the chessboard. “On the edge of a swamp, a pathetic guard tower crumbles to dust in the ashwind.”

Gesturing towards an empty space on the board, “A pelota court where you once played as a child.”

Moving his hand across the board he pointed out a cluster of pawns, “Cousins, who don’t even know your name.”

Tapping a pair of queens, “Sisters, who encourage your unusual behavior because they believe their husbands are more likely to inherit your father’s land.”

And then the king piece at the center of the board, “Your father, the town mayor and regional vassal, who’s annual tribute to the imperial treasury is a few hundred bushels of toadflax and ironwort.”

Marco realized why the pattern of the pieces on the chessboard was familiar, it was a map of his hometown. There was the scholomance, the clocktower and the pestilence ministry.

Marco smiled, “I’m flattered that you would concern yourself with the details of my upbringing.”

The Lord did not return his good humor. “It is the details of your downfall with which we are concerned!” he snapped, sweeping the pieces from the chessboard and scattering them across the room with great force.

Marco calmly reached into his tunic and produced a small bundle of oilcloth wrapped tightly with twine and placed it on the empty chessboard.

As he slowly unbundled the oilcloth, Marco spoke. “I’ve heard it said, great and wise Lord, that you are a true connoisseur of delicacies and that you have tasted all manner of beasts and beings. Is that true?”

The Lord of Hêla was intrigued but also in a fugue, mere moments from striking the Whisperer dead. His eyes locked on Marco’s throat, he hardly noticed what Marco was doing with the oilcloth.

He said with a blood curdling hiss, “I have tasted the flesh of every creature in Hêla.”

Marco calmly pulled back the cover of the oilcloth, revealing an assortment of severed fingers and toes. They were wet, pale blue, and covered in a crystalline sheen.

The Lord’s gaze slowly moved from Marco’s throat to the morsels that laid before him.

“Excellent!” said Marco. “Then could you tell me, what manner of creature tastes as these do?”

The fugue passed as suddenly as it arrived. The Lord of Hêla reached out and plucked a fat toe from the pile, as a syrupy thread trailed behind it. He sniffed at it but having already consumed the flesh of ten thousand abominations, he feared no poison.

He popped it in his mouth and chewed, with a light crunch. His eyes got big and he smiled.

Marco confessed that he already knew the answer to his question, “This is called ‘miziren’. It is said to be a delicacy from the surface world and its manufacture is a very interesting process indeed. It involves a flowering plant, a stinging insect and a creature known as a ‘hoo-man’.”

The Lord of Hêla was very pleased. Marco was even provided with a paiza — a gold tablet that authorized him to make use of a vast network of imperial stables and lodgings. He became Mapmaker to the Empire of Hêla. Eventually, Marco would even chart the depths of the Great Pit.

But the Lord of Hêla made this offer under one condition — that Marco never again return to the Gate of Massina.