The mouth on the brick snapped open. A flattened black tongue poked out for a moment, failing to moisten its cracked lips.
A susurration gradually filled the demons’ ears as the chamber came alive, the faintest of whispers growing as the myriad dry mouths of countless bricks gave voice.
The two demons unconsciously stepped back as the brick at the Conjuror’s feet coughed. For a moment it was silent, working its lips as if to speak. And then it retched up a fine mist of blackish blood that reached eight or ten feet into the air, spattering Agaliarept. Burst after burst of the mist hung before them until they saw a shape appear within it, the motionless, congealing form of a Demon Major.
A low buzz, Adramalik imagined of approval, emanated from the flies around the Conjuror.
The blood-formed demon, an avatar only, raised his head and looked at the demons present. Adramalik recognized the Grand Duke Astaroth, his sigils palely lit against his dripping chest, his sagging shoulders creating an impression of age and weariness.
The buzz of the circling flies became a Voice.
“Your spies have not returned, Astaroth. They were intercepted through the efforts of a Baron Faraii, I believe. Sargatanas’ Guard are very well trained.”
The conjured demon hesitated. Two tiny glyphs of sight blazed in his blood-filled eye sockets.
“Indeed. I taught him their drills.” Astaroth’s voice was distorted, gurgling.
“Their leadership is quite good as well. Of this,” the buzzing Voice said, “I am sure you are also aware.
“My six legions,” it continued, “are marching into your wretched wards as we speak. They will be held back until they are needed. They will reinforce yours, if yours falter. There must not be the perception in Adamantinarx that we are leading the attack on his wards.”
Astaroth’s chin sank. “It will be as you say, my Prince.”
Adramalik knew that the old demon had hoped for more, that he wanted Beelzebub’s alliance to be known to all in Hell.
“Are your troops in readiness?”
“No, my Prince, but we are close.”
“While you may have superior numbers on your side, Astaroth, do not be fooled. Sargatanas has managed his wards brilliantly… far better than you… and he is cunning. This is a second chance. Be clever and what is his will be yours. And mine.”
Astaroth’s chin rose and he nodded.
“Victory to you, Astaroth!”
The distant Demon Major bowed and was gone in a shower of descending blood. Agaliarept, spattered from head to toe, bent and plucked the brick from the floor.
The Voice returned.
“Agares, see to it that Duke Fleurety’s legions in the field do not engage Sargatanas’ armies. They will remain after the battle. Also, Adramalik, have your Knights and Nergar’s agents round up all of Astaroth’s emissaries here in Dis and have them destroyed. That weak fool Astaroth’s time in Hell is at an end.” And with that the Voice trailed off into a barely audible wheeze and then nothing at all.
Adramalik and Agares bowed and turned to ascend out of the Conjuring Chamber. Before he was too far from its center the Chancellor turned, for a moment, and caught a glimpse of Agaliarept, his many long tongues extended. The Conjuror General was cleaning himself, lapping the blood from his darkly glistening robes. Adramalik shook his head and followed Agares.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Hani was pushed up against the giant plinth along with the hundreds of other brick workers. After the quayside ramp had been completed he and the remaining souls were shunted to a new location—the site of a towering figure of Sargatanas that loomed over the Forum of Halphas.
It was a colossus among colossi. Cruciform, with its arms and six wings outstretched, the black statue stood nearly five hundred feet tall. Built upon a natural rise in Adamantinarx, it faced the river, chin down, eyes closed in the tragic, court-sanctioned idiom of nearly all monumental statuary in Hell. During breaks, Hani looked at it, trying to fathom the emotion that must go through the demonic mind when it regarded such works. It was impossible; not having been an angel, he could only guess.
Work had finished on the statue itself. Hani and his gang had been called in at the very last days of construction. Only the last step of the plinth remained unfinished, and as the demon engineers and architects gathered at its base he could see that some sort of ceremony was about to take place.
Overseers prodded him and Div and the others into a long line that paralleled the plinth. There Hani stood waiting, watching.
The demons assembled in what he could plainly see were hierarchical ranks, anticipating the arrival of some official. Hani tried to hear any name, but the moaning of some of the workers was too loud to penetrate. It was amazing, he thought, how much sound some of the mouthless souls could make.
After standing for a short time, he saw the vanguard of the approaching party—standard-bearers carrying their narrow, vertical banners with the ubiquitous sigil of Lord of Adamantinarx Sargatanas blazing above. A thrill of fear washed over Hani; it would be his first close-hand glimpse of a Demon Major and he did not know what to expect. Whatever a high demon’s appearance, it was the awareness of his dreadful capriciousness when it came to souls that terrified Hani.
Scourges set about the throng of souls, whipping them into silence. For that he was almost grateful.
Looming behind the phalanx of skin-cloaked standard-bearers were three enormous soul-beasts, creatures that Hani had seen before but never so close. He had heard that these souls were special, that in their Lives they had been prominent but corrupt religious leaders from many sects and that their transgressions had been deemed even more punishable than most. Because of this the demons had taken an unusual and heightened interest in them. Hani thought it showed.
As the small procession approached, he could hear the dull thud of the heavy beasts’ feet, the scraping of their unshorn nails upon the flagstones, the grunting exhalations of their breath. A dozen harness-spikes were driven into each of their heads, through which their jingling bridles and reins were strung. They were so near as they passed him that he felt the air move from the swaying blankets that hung upon their rough-hided bodies. He could not help but be amazed at their size. One of them rolled its giant head and its bloodshot eye fixed upon him. A strange ripple of some distant memory, of creatures nearly as ponderous and eyes nearly as intelligent, flashed before his mind’s eye. He closed his eyes to try to grasp it, to analyze it, but it was too fleeting and vanished altogether.
He was so distracted by the beasts that he almost neglected to look upon their riders. And when he did he was thoroughly, breathtakingly impressed. These were dark, godlike beings, terrible to look at, yet fascinating in every detail of their appearance. When their creatures came to a halt before the plinth, they dismounted, light upon their feet for creatures more than twice his height, and his stomach churned as they came toward the line of souls.
Sargatanas, for it must have been him, led the trio, and he was all that Hani would have expected of the Lord of Adamantinarx. Huge legs covered in skins and bone greaves and as thick as Hani’s torso carried him easily toward the assembled demons. Tiny sparks sprayed when he walked. His steaming body was covered in layers of deep-crimson trailing robes, finely decorated with his sigils picked out in gold thread, and adorned with long garlandlike strands of organs picked out from choice souls. A gaping hole, jagged and seemingly ember filled, glowed from his medal-decorated chest, but it was nothing next to the fires that crowned his bone-plated head. Hani stared at his face, aquiline, broken, animated, and fierce. He saw tiny, wholly nonhuman bones shifting as unfathomable emotions played upon its surface. It was a face that, even in its frightful, degraded state, suggested something lost long ago—an alien grace, perhaps. Hani knew what Sargatanas had been—the colossus showed him that—and now knew what he had become. Stealing a closer look, craning his head up, he saw the silvered eyes that glittered and darted, veiled, armored eyes, he ima
gined, to look upon the sights of Hell.
Sargatanas stood mere yards from Hani and he felt his knees buckle slightly. For all his observations, the physical presence of the Demon Major was overwhelming; there was, it seemed, a tremendous, supernatural power to his proximity. Hani did not know if it was some studied force of intimidation that the demons used to enforce servitude or merely some innate part of their being. And Hani was not alone in its influence; some souls actually fell before the demon, unable to stand, whimpering without control. The demon engineers, architects, and Overseers, too, seemed as if they were holding their breath. Only the banners flapping loudly in the hot wind fought the silence.
Hani watched as one of Sargatanas’ two companions leaned in to his lord. This demon, too, was impressive but, if appearance was any gauge, was the Demon Major’s inferior by reason of his less elaborate decorations.
“I know that you never wanted this, Lord,” Hani overheard. His eyes widened in amazement. While he had understood the Overseers’ infrequent guttural commands, he had never imagined that the higher demons’ speech would be intelligible. Their accent was strange and hard to penetrate and their voices many layered, but with some effort he could understand them!
“Here it stands, Valefar. I accept that. But I do not accept why Beelzebub insists on these hollow gestures. I do not like this thing any more than I like his motives.”
Sargatanas’ voice sent a chill down Hani’s spine. It was a terrible voice, resonant, and almost hoarse to the soul’s ears. He tried not to imagine what it would be like angry.
“My lord,” the demon called Valefar said, “this was not a battle worth fighting. Just accept it. Anyway,” he said, looking up at the figure, “it looks good here.”
Sargatanas shook his head. “I have never been good at blind acceptance.”
Hani saw some more workers collapse.
“Enough,” said Sargatanas to Valefar, taking a thick, glyph-dotted scepter from him. “Let us finish this pretense and go back to the palace.” He beckoned the Chief Engineer, a beast-headed demon whom Hani had rarely seen, who nearly fell in his haste to obey his lord.
“Yes, my lord,” the engineer said, saluting, covering the hole in his chest.
“You have done a splendid job, Abbeladdur. And you have left the last step for me to finish.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Abbeladdur’s eyes never met Sargatanas’.
Hani quailed. He realized that he and his small group of workers were very close to the unfinished step. Overseers edged in, prodding and compacting the line so that he was even closer. Dangerously close.
He turned back to Sargatanas, who had his scepter in hand.
More souls tumbled to the ground, begging not to be turned to bricks.
“No, please. My only crime,” a soul waving his forked flipper-hands cried out, “was to steal bread for my family. Please, please don’t do this to me.”
Another soul with half a jaw shrieked, “Please, Lord, please. This is forever; please, no.” This he repeated over and over.
Hani clenched his jaws and tried to close his eyes but could not.
As he raised the scepter, Sargatanas stopped. Hani saw him staring at a single soul who, it appeared, was unafraid to stare back at him.
Hani had seen her earlier, as they worked; she was hard to ignore. Tall and striking with unusually piercing, blue eyes, she, like himself, was relatively unscathed by the Change. He had almost thought her attractive, a thought so ludicrous in Hell he had smiled inwardly. Souls around her had called her Bo-ad and given her some breadth for her fierceness. Now, she stood proudly at the moment of her ultimate punishment.
But the Lord of Adamantinarx was not about to suffer the insolence of a soul lightly. He moved a pace, which brought him toweringly before her.
Hani saw her trembling, saw how she resisted sobbing or simply collapsing as the others had done. Instead, she looked up at Sargatanas, shaking, and Hani, himself shaking, swore under his breath in incredulity. Looking closely at her, he saw that she was wearing a necklace upon her well-formed bosom, a necklace from which hung a tiny white figure, the sister of his own!
“Why,” she asked, “why am I here? I killed, it is true, but I fought justly against a ruler who neither understood nor cared for me. Is that any reason to spend eternity here? Is it?”
Again Hani swore, but this time in admiration. The passion and forcefulness of her words carried Sargatanas back half a step. For a few seconds he stared at her and then, incredibly, he turned away, brows knit, jaw set. Valefar stepped toward Sargatanas. The two demons stood looking at each other for a moment.
“What is it, my lord?” the demon named Valefar asked.
“It is the same reason I am here,” Hani thought he heard Sargatanas say. Walking past Valefar, the Demon Major placed the scepter in his companion’s extended hand, and the Prime Minister spun, glaring at Bo-ad.
With an uttered command, Valefar sent a bolt of luminous writing forth from the baton touching the female’s forehead and imploding her in a horrific instant. The glyphs flickered outward to each side of where she now lay, a steaming, rectangular brick. Vengefully, it seemed, the glyphs jumped from soul to soul converting each of them into a brick and stopping only two souls short of Hani.
The step, smoking from the heat of its creation, was complete.
Sargatanas turned, like one who had forgotten something. He moved slowly back to where Bo-ad had stood and knelt down, his robes falling in a wide arc around him. Hani, who could see what no one else could because of his position, watched the demon probe with his clawed fingers in the brick, poking into the folds of what had been the woman. He saw Sargatanas pause for a moment and then, tugging lightly, withdraw the necklace, sinew strand first and followed by the amulet. The demon rubbed its polished surface, thoughtfully, and then clenched it tightly in his fist. And then, without any warning, an eye opened on the brick’s uppermost surface, a piercing blue, pain-filled eye that looked up accusingly at Sargatanas. The Demon Major started and then stared back. Hani could just see a tear welling in the eye, unable to free itself, pooling. Amazed, he watched Sargatanas carefully dip a claw into the welled tear and, after a moment’s hesitation, inexplicably smear it upon the little white statue’s surface.
The demon rose, a mountain of flesh and bone and fire, majestic and menacing again. And yet, the soul thought, he seemed somehow shaken. Hani had seen something no one, let alone a soul, was meant to see, and it had given him a great deal to wrestle over.
“Valefar,” said Sargatanas, his voice low, “bring up the mounts and let us go back to the palace. I am very tired.”
Chapter Eleven
DIS
Ardat Lili was late. She had insisted upon going out with the half-dozen new statues, and Lilith, remembering the Prince’s words, had come very close to ordering her to remain in the chambers. Instead, seeing her resolve, Lilith had warned her to be extra careful leaving and entering the palace, to take special precautions to avoid any detection. Perhaps that was it, Lilith thought. Perhaps even now she is carefully sneaking past the guards at the Keep’s entrance. As much as Lilith cared for her handmaiden and feared for her safety, she still needed Ardat to spread the statues throughout Hell’s cities.
Work, Lilith decided, would be the ideal distraction while she waited for her handmaiden to return.
The marked piece of bone had freed itself from the wall easily, almost as if it wanted to be prized away, and when it lay upon Lilith’s small table she had been even more pleased with its shape than before. It was special and she knew exactly what she would do with it. And to whom it would be given. She had found Sargatanas’ charisma undeniable.
A shaggy pile of curled bone shavings lay around the piece’s base. She watched, almost like an onlooker, as the fine chisels seemed to move almost by themselves, so light and deft was her touch, so inspired was she. Even so, this piece would take some time before it was finished; not only was it larger, but it also demanded
more of her than she fretted she was capable of.
Her little Liliths were easy now; the formula for them was so clear that she could sculpt one in two sittings. Ardat was so impressed with that and so eager to take them out, Lilith thought, stinging herself with the reminder of her absence.
It had been good to see Valefar again, good to know that the influence she had exerted had succeeded in saving him. He had been so reluctant to leave. But it comforted her to know that he had been smart enough to settle in the only city in Hell remotely worth living in. Lord Sargatanas’ city, Adamantinarx-upon-the-Acheron. It seemed like a dream, to her.
She had been in Hell a long time when that city was founded, alone and bitter, wandering through the darkness with only her hatred of the Throne growing in her belly. That, she had repeated for millennia, was not how it was supposed to be.
At times, she thought her ceaseless tears could have put out the very fires of Hell. Through the darkness she wandered and wept and brooded. And then came the Fall and Lucifer. She remembered staring up at the perpetual night sky, a mixture of fear and awe in her breast, as she watched the fiery descents. And then, somehow, Lucifer had found her and her world of isolation was changed.
She and he were alone together, far away from the others. Traversing the blasted landscape, sharing their rage and sorrow, they were almost happy to have been given each other. As she sat carving, she remembered the day she turned away from him and the moment when she turned back to see that he was gone. She knew where he was and knew, too, how and why he had left. These things he had sworn her to secrecy on, a secret she had faithfully kept. She had been his consort, his almost willing possession, for days only. But it had been time enough, she thought, chipping and shaving away at the statue, time enough to see the beauty and the baseness in him. The nobility and the deceit.
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