The priest intoned the Canticle Benedictus, his breath freezing in the air as the solid oak casket was lowered into the hardened ground. Simon bent to pick up a handful of damp earth to throw on the coffin, holding the grainy soil in his palm. He focused on the ground, taking a moment to breathe through the wave of grief.

A thud of earth on wood.

Simon looked up quickly as someone else performed the family honour for the dead. When he saw who it was, the forgotten soil spilled from his hand.

Gest, his errant twin, had finally returned, but only after the death of the man who raised them.

“Grant this mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to Thy servant departed, that he may not receive in punishment the requital of his deeds who in desire did keep Thy will…”

As the priest said the final prayers, Gest smiled across the grave, his pale hazel eyes and high cheekbones a perfect mirror of Simon’s own, yet somehow an air of superiority and entitlement set him apart.

His black pea-coat was perfectly tailored, and Simon was suddenly aware of his own ill-fitting suit borrowed for the occasion. At a superficial level, they were identical twins, but Simon had always felt like a pale imitation, a watery reflection of his brother’s bright colour. Jealousy rekindled within him, a remnant of childhood rivalry. Try as he might, Simon had never been able to take the place of the favoured twin with his grandfather, despite his labour in the pursuit of the Great Work.

“May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

The gathered crowd mumbled Amen from bowed heads and began to move away from the grave. Simon shook hands and nodded appropriately as people spoke kindly to him of his grandfather. But his eyes kept straying to Gest, who stood silently by the grave, his tightly wound energy repelling any who thought to approach him. Finally, when the last of the mourners left, Simon walked to his brother’s side. They stood together looking into the pit, a reminder of where all must finally rest.

“Why now?” Simon asked, his voice clipped, almost breaking.

“He sent me a letter asking me to come a few weeks’ back. Said he had something for me, something you were unwilling to take to its conclusion.” Gest turned, his eyes as cold as the grave. “Where is it?”

He put his hand on Simon’s arm, fingers gripping tight. Memories of youth flooded back and Simon remembered their games, how his bruises and broken bones were always blamed on clumsiness, how Gest was praised for caring so much for his brother – the weaker twin, the slower twin, the twin less blessed. That hand was still able to crush and dominate.

Simon flinched, as the years peeled away. “It’s back at the house.”

 

* * *

 

The mansion would have been opulent once, but its grandeur had faded through many years of neglect. Gest strode ahead into the dark entrance hall, quick steps taking him into dusty rooms the brothers had run through together as children, hiding amongst the towering bookcases, their palaces of imagination.

“It really hasn’t changed much.” He ran a finger along the grimy mantelpiece. “Seriously Si, how have you managed to live in this gloomy place for so long?”

Simon watched his brother’s mercurial movements, his confident stride. He had always been the saturnine twin, the dark opposite to Gest’s golden sun.

“I’ve been helping Grandfather. You know how much his research meant to him, and now to me.”

Gest laughed, and Simon felt his years of intellectual pursuit dismissed in a heartbeat.

He had heard rumours of how Gest had spent the last twelve years, his string of beautiful women and exotic travels funded by the wealth they were both supposed to inherit, his expensive tastes paid for by ever-dwindling funds. Simon knew that lust had also ruled his grandfather’s early life, but the old man had wanted something different as he aged, searching for power and fulfilment beyond material things. Simon desired influence far beyond his brother’s petty pleasures, but there had been days when he had longed to lose himself in an orgy of flesh.  

Gest shrugged. “How you live your life is your own choice. But I want what he promised me, then I’ll leave you alone in this melancholic place.”

“His gift is in the lab. It’s been extended since you were last here.” Simon walked ahead through the dilapidated hallway to a metal door and pushed it open. “This way.”

The neglected main house was in stark contrast to the gleaming laboratory, secretly constructed, where no one would have suspected that Simon and his grandfather continued to pursue the Great Work of the alchemists. Cutting edge science mingled with the occult, chemical formulas jostling for position with the symbols of medieval hermetics.

Gest walked through the lab, glancing from side to side with little interest. He idly picked up a round-bottomed flask and swirled the ruby liquid within.

“Careful with that.” Simon snatched the flask away and placed it carefully back onto its stand.

Gest moved around the end of the bench. “That’s his book, isn’t it?”

Simon turned to see Gest fingering his grandfather’s most precious tome, open to a page of intricately detailed symbols inscribed with spidery handwriting around the edge.

“It’s mine now. He gave it to me.” Simon thought back to the night when he had ripped the book from his grandfather’s embrace. The old man begged to hold it once more, his arms outstretched in need, covered with tattoos of words he had never explained. His eyes were shadowed with dread as he reached for it, filled with sinister memories the man couldn’t help but relive, but would never speak of aloud. Simon had thrust the vodka bottle at him, his grandfather’s addiction the only way to quiet the old man, while he delved ever deeper into the esoteric mysteries within.  

Simon watched anxiously as Gest picked up the book, desperate to tear it from his brother’s irreverent hands. Its cover was a patchwork of different coloured leather, sewn with cords and pulled tight like scars on a chequered board of human skin. The spine and pages were edged with gold, a work of art even without the precious words inside.

Turning away as if he cared nothing for the book, Simon walked to a large print on the wall. Intricately woven symbols of the planets, astrological signs and their alchemical metals were etched in pitch black upon a white background. The iron of Mars, the god of war, and Mercury’s quicksilver, ruling planet of the twins of Gemini. He touched one side of the print and it swung from the wall to reveal a safe.

“So that’s where the old bastard hid his treasure.” Gest dropped the book with a thump onto the bench.

Simon reached into the safe, took a heavy manila envelope out, and handed it to his brother. “Grandfather always said this was for you, and that I wasn’t to open it.”

It had clearly been opened.

Gest arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow and Simon shrugged. “I didn’t seriously believe you would come back for it.”

Gest pulled the papers out of the envelope and frowned as he studied the pages, a combination of handwritten diary entries scrawled with notes and modern GPS printouts. He looked up with a question in his eyes.

Simon smiled with perverse pleasure at his brother’s ignorance. “It’s a map, or a series of them. Grandfather told me about it after his first heart attack. He pleaded with me to follow the directions, to take the path he always wanted to. He spent most of his life trying to work out the symbols in the book, and towards the end, he said he had finally discovered the key. But he was on so much morphine by then, I dismissed his ranting. That must have been when he sent the letter to you.”

Gest spread the pages out on a worktop, scanning them quickly. “These look authentic, Si, and I’m sure you’re aware of the state of the bank accounts. We need this or we’re both finished.”

“Even if it takes everything we have left?” Simon looked around at his beloved lab, wondering if the risk was worth it even as a desire rose within him to discover what lay at the end of the map.

Gest grinned, his eyes sparkling with a lust for adventure. “Even if it takes every cent. We’ll get it back a thousand-fold. Remember Grandfather’s stories, the ones he told us as boys by the fire as the wind howled outside. Diamonds and precious stones and gems without name, just waiting for us to pull them from the ice. Now we have the map to show us the way.”

Gest embraced his brother, spinning him around the lab. Simon reluctantly gave into his merriment, smiling for the first time since his grandfather’s death, finally understanding why the map had been left to his headstrong, reckless twin.

 

* * *

 

 

Two months later

 

Simon shook his head as he thought back to that moment in the lab, the beginning of this trip to the frozen wastelands of the far north.

The map had indicated a little-known stratum of caves within the Arctic Circle, but their ship could carry them no further and now they had to take dog sleds for the final section of the journey inland.

The expedition had drained the last of the bank loans that Gest secured against the mansion and the lab, and Simon cursed his own weakness at letting his brother mortgage his life’s work. His jaw ached from days of clenching it; each thunk of ice crunching on the side of the hull reminded him of the miles of frozen water between them and civilisation.

There was no going back.

The specialist team finished the last checks of the equipment they needed to carry inland, and Simon stood on the ice watching as the handlers brought the sled dog teams out from the ship. The Siberian huskies and Alaskan malamutes leapt about yelping, shaking their shaggy fur, tongues hanging out as their hot breath frosted the air. They were reminiscent of wolves with sharp teeth and thick fur, animals suited to this cruel environment, ready to do battle with Nature.

“Cry havoc,” Simon whispered, “and let slip the dogs of war.”

He zipped up his fur-lined coat, his hand skimming the top pocket where his name was sewn in violet letters to help the crew tell the identical twins apart. As if he could be mistaken for his brother, Simon thought, as he watched Gest arguing with the expedition leader, making sure the man followed his instructions to the letter.

Since his brother’s attention was elsewhere, Simon bent to check the position of the book within his pack. He had wrapped it in multiple protective and waterproof layers, but he still felt a need to reaffirm its safety.

As he placed his hand upon it, a curious warmth emanated from within, a pulse that seemed to quicken as the book moved closer to its home. Simon looked up to see gusts of wind on the ice, swirling into figures like mutated angels as they reached for the book with misshapen hands. He blinked and they dissolved into eddies of chill air. Simon tightened the straps on his pack, pulling it closer to his body as the team readied to move out.

 

* * *

 

Later that day, the expedition leader called a halt as he and Gest checked their coordinates on the old paper map against the modern GPS. Simon peered around, squinting at the sun through his goggles, taking in their surroundings with a dawning sense of recognition. The shallow valley with a silhouette of icy hills around them matched one of the drawings in the book, crimson lines etched in a shaky hand that his grandfather had never been able to interpret.

With rising excitement, Simon stepped off his sled. He snapped on cross-country skis and headed towards the edge of the valley, using poles to spur himself onward. The barking and howling of dogs followed him and he heard Gest shout in alarm, but he wanted to be the first to confirm whether this was indeed the place in the drawing. He rushed ahead around a curve in the valley floor.

Before him, a precipice fell into a vast pit beneath a strange formation of ice cliffs reminiscent of a demon’s head. A dank and foul-smelling waterfall crashed into the depths, the dark water a sharp contrast to the clear crystal they had found elsewhere. Stones the colour of iron encrusted with mould edged around the volcanic crevasse. Steam poured from the hole, filling the air with a hot stench like decaying flesh. Simon stood on the rim, part of him desperate to turn and run, and yet a dark sense called to the murky depths below as he gazed down into the tumbling waters.

Gest arrived on his skis, panting a little with the exertion of catching his brother, his face clouded with annoyance at being left behind.

“The map says that the caves are accessible from the waterfall,” Gest said, as if he had found the location. “We’re going down there. We’re close, I can feel it.”

The rest of the expedition team arrived and soon the crew were busy hammering in equipment and setting up abseiling gear.

Gest was impatient and, as soon as he could, he descended first with his head-lamp on, ignoring the expedition leader’s request for initial safety checks. As he disappeared beneath the lip of the waterfall, Simon hurried his own preparation, quickly following Gest over the edge.

He glanced down, watching as his brother ducked under an overhang into a concealed cavern, unhooking his safety ropes in order to move more freely. Simon felt a pulse of excitement at finding the cave, a throbbing that seemed to vibrate through his pack from the book. Could this really be the place?

As he reached the cavern entrance, a low moan echoed from within, a deep sound of horror that was scarcely human, then retching and coughing.

Simon unhooked his harness and hurried down the rocky corridor into the cavern, blue light filtering down as the walls turned to ice away from the heat of the waterfall. As his head lamp flickered and reflected off the surface, Simon caught a glimpse of his own face as if in a mirror, startling him with the resemblance to his twin. He rounded a corner to find Gest bent double as he threw up the remains of his meagre breakfast, the smell of vomit permeating the chill of the cave. Gest pointed and Simon turned slowly, his head lamp illuminating what his brother had seen.

A cylindrical block of ice bisected the cavern. There were bodies inside, split open, hacked apart, frozen limbs protruding in bulges. Simon walked around it, breathing deeply, swallowing down the bile that filled his throat.

One man was split from chin to groin, his entrails dragged from his body, his heart cut from his chest, mutilated intestines frozen into a tableau of agony. Another figure lay face down, his head crushed, his back torn open by claws that rent his spine, exposing bones through ragged flesh flayed from his body. Who – or what – had done this?

Gest leaned against the wall, his face pale. He took a swig of water to rinse his mouth and then spat it out onto the floor of the cave, where it swiftly froze. “What do you think happened to them?”

Simon pointed at one of the dead, his head twisted around to face the back of his body, eyes frozen open. The man’s clothes were the style and fabric of an earlier generation. “Whatever it was, it happened a long time ago.”

Gest took a deep breath. “Do you think Grandfather knew of this?”

Simon heard judgment in his brother’s voice, but he only felt a growing kinship with his grandfather’s quest.

He swung off his pack and removed the book of multi-hued leather. It seemed to pulse in his hands as Simon flicked through the pages looking for the handwritten notes he had glimpsed once and now perhaps began to understand. He found them and smoothed the page open.

It showed a rough map of the north with the label Hyperborea inscribed in blood and twin lightning bolts scrawled at the bottom. A demon squatted in the middle of the land mass, a creature of primal myth, six wings beating against the cold north wind.

His grandfather had never been able to explain what it meant but now Simon felt a heat rise from the book, a throb of latent power. Light emanated from it and Simon’s vision flashed. He saw the cave floor awash with blood, bodies hacked apart as a team of explorers died at the hands of a possessed madman who fled alone with the book, claiming its power.

Gest shone his torch away from the corpses towards the back of the cave, where light reflected in sparkling facets of brilliant colour.

“Radio above,” he said, no longer focused on the wretched forms of the dead, but on the potential riches beyond. “Tell them to wait while we investigate further. We mustn’t let anyone else see this.”

The visions of violence dissipated with Gest’s interruption and Simon found himself obeying in a daze. He walked to the mouth of the cavern and radioed that all was fine, and they would report again in another hour. As he walked back through the cave of the dead, Simon tucked the book into his inner clothing, close to his heart, relishing the strength that he drew from its growing potency, his heartbeat synchronising with its strange pulse.

As he reached the inner chamber, Gest turned, his face illuminated by the flashlight, eyes aflame with desire for limitless wealth. “Look Si, these are diamonds. This is where I rebuild my fortune… Where we rebuild our fortune, brother. Together.”

Simon nodded, moving closer to examine the gems embedded in the ice wall. Behind the shining stones, he could see a darker shadow in the shape of an altar.

He sensed that it was the true goal and his excitement soared as he realised that the Great Work could indeed be finished. He would return the book to its rightful place and claim the reward beyond temporal riches, leaving the jewels to the greed of his twin.

Simon reached for his pack and unhooked his pickaxe. He gripped the handle and hefted its weight, giving it a few swings to test the action.

“Careful with that,” Gest said, his voice imperious.

At his brother’s tone, Simon felt a sudden desire for great physical strength, a need to turn his body into hard, powerful muscle. He was sick of being considered the studious weakling, disgusted with himself for allowing his brother’s dominance for so long.

He swung the axe heavily into the wall and a thud resounded through the chamber. Simon levered a chunk of the bejewelled ice to the floor where Gest broke it into smaller pieces with a hammer and chisel, picking out the shining gems. They soon removed their outer jackets, working up a sweat in the small cave with their labour. The pile of jewels grew larger, and Gest started to fill his rucksack.

With one giant swing, Simon broke through into an alcove carved by ancient human hands. He worked faster to hack away the remaining ice and revealed an altar of black stone carved with mysterious symbols. There was an indentation in the middle, and Simon instinctively knew that the book should be laid there.

Gest stood up to look more closely. “What is it? Do you think it’s worth anything?”

Simon’s rage erupted at his brother’s disregard for the sacred. He turned in anger. Gest shrank back at his brother’s expression, stretching out his hands in mock surrender.

“Okay, okay. Let’s just pack up the gems and get out of here. The team can come down and dig out the rest, but these jewels, we keep for ourselves.”

As Gest bent to fasten his pack, Simon reached into his jacket for the book. He unwrapped the precious tome, dark pleasure rising within him as he touched its outer skin. With reverence, he placed it on the altar within the boundaries of the indentation. It fit perfectly and Simon knelt before it, bending his head in veneration.

Behind him, Gest snorted in derision at his actions.

As Simon rose and turned in anger, the chamber trembled, as if giants shook their limbs to free themselves from the ice.

A hail of rock fell from the ceiling and the brothers covered their heads. A chunk knocked Simon over and he landed heavily on his side, his skull smacking against the ground. His vision darkened and then cleared again as he sat up and rubbed his head, pain lancing through him.

The altar had split down the centre of the rock beneath the book and icy vapour oozed out of the newly formed crack, dissipating into the air. Afraid that the book would be damaged, Simon reached for it, breathing in the tainted air as he did so. It smelled metallic and he tasted blood in his mouth, then his senses sharpened, and he heard a terrible howl pouring from the abyss below beneath the beating of demonic wings.

“We’d better hurry,” Gest said, as if he couldn’t hear the frenzied clamour or see the cloudy haze. “Clearly this cave isn’t stable. We need to get the jewels out while we still can.”

He forced another chunk of gemstone into his pack. It shone in the lamplight and Simon caught a glimpse of his brother’s reflection.

Gest’s handsome face turned into that of a hideous lizard and behind him, a curved scorpion’s tail emerged from his ripped snowsuit. Simon fell back against the wall, watching as his twin’s face morphed from the Gest he knew into a sinister visage of reptilian scales, forked tongue flickering in the air.

Something within him understood that this unholy demon was his brother’s true nature revealed by the book. There was only one way he could stop it.

Simon surged forward, his strength amplified from within. He pushed his brother to the ground, raising the pickaxe once more.

As Gest screamed in terror, Simon brought the weapon down. He became the avenger, the destroyer, hacking relentlessly at his brother’s body as words from the precious book of skin ran through his mind.

Simon’s breath was ragged as he finally cleaved the head from the mutilated torso, the ice slippery with gore as what remained of Gest’s body began to harden with ice crystals.

Another tremor rocked the cavern. There was little time before it collapsed, concealing both riches and the murder within.

The two padded outer jackets lay side by side away from the bloody mess. Simon stood looking at them, thinking of the divergent lives that he and Gest had experienced. In that moment he saw a possible future, where earthly pleasure and power could be his as well as the Great Work fulfilled.

He removed his bloody top, chest exposed to the chill air, revealing a tattoo of an orb cupped within a bowl on top of an inverted cross. Simon tugged a fresh merino sweater from his pack, pulled it over his head and zipped Gest’s jacket on over the top. He straightened his back, adopting his brother’s proud posture, then he picked up the two heavy packs and headed for the waterfall. It was time to tell the crew that his brother Simon had perished within the cavern as it collapsed, despite his own desperate attempts at rescue.

Behind him, icy vapour rose from the altar, winding its way out of the ancient cavern into the world above.

 

Author’s Note

 

Sins of Treachery is one of three short stories originally written as part of an online competition, The Descent, run by Kobo, an online ebook and audiobook retailer, for the launch of Dan Brown’s thriller Inferno in 2013.

The Descent was based on Dante’s Inferno and the stories featured as the opening to a transmedia game that linked to special websites, using symbols, words, and numbers from the story as clues to the next step.

My brief was to write three interlinking stories using the symbolism of Dante’s Inferno, grouped into the main categories of sin. I published the three stories together in a previous collection, A Thousand Fiendish Angels, but the ‘buried’ theme seemed particularly apt here so I wanted to also include this story.

 

As part of my research, I read a modern translation of Dante’s Inferno and made notes on the text, writing down images and specific words to use in my stories that would echo the rings of Hell.

In Sins of Treachery, Simon whispers, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war,” spoken by Anthony after the murder of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. The traitors who led that insurrection are in the deepest circle of Inferno, in the mouth of Satan himself.

The Arctic location echoes Dante’s Hell, which is encased in ice, and the entrance is through a ‘precipice of dark-tinted water’. The tortured, distorted bodies of the men in the ice pillar reflect the terrible wounds of the treacherous and the fraudulent, some torn apart and disembowelled by demons for eternity.

Occult and mythological symbols were used to evoke the atmosphere of Inferno and also to lead to further clues within the original Descent game. In Sins of Treachery, symbols of the planets, astrological signs and their alchemical metals are shown on the safe door, featuring the iron of Mars, the god of war, and Mercury’s quicksilver, ruling planet of the twins of Gemini.

The names of the characters also resonate with Inferno. Simon Magus is punished in the Eighth circle of Hell for Fraud, and Gestas was the impenitent thief crucified alongside Jesus, greedy for more.