Lilith put the chisel down. That was it, she thought. That was what I saw in him. In Sargatanas. The same churning emotions, the same compelling look in his eyes. But was he the same? From everything she had heard, the Demon Major was fierce but fair. He ruled through wisdom, not butchery.
“Oh, where is she?” Lilith muttered, and almost as the words died on her lips she heard scuffing sounds outside her chamber. She rose, relieved, and walked quickly to the door.
The Chancellor General of the Order stood in the open doorway, cloaked in an ember-flecked and smoking traveling skin, a clear sign that he had just returned from outside the Keep. Eyes slitted, a smirk jagging his mouth, Adramalik signaled two flanking Knights to take up positions on either side of her. Without a word she followed him, the red-swathed Knights looming so large on either side that she felt smothered by their robes.
They traveled the corridors in silence, heading, she realized, toward the Rotunda. An audience with him? At this hour? Lilith always needed some kind of advance notice to put her mind in the right state for Beelzebub. That had been their agreement. This was unprecedented and with each step, though her fears were inchoate, Lilith grew more apprehensive.
They halted at the Rotunda’s entrance and Lilith stooped over the narrow threshold, followed by Adramalik. The buzzing was loud, louder than she had heard it in some time.
She hated the long walk through the fetid gloom to the throne; there was too much time for her to undo the emotional armor that she ordinarily layered on. She looked up and saw that the hanging skins were unusually active, moving as if a strong wind was daring to disturb them. She was nearly to the throne; a single thick pillar of chewed flesh rose before her obscuring the view. The obscene buzzing was almost unbearable and now that she was so close another sound was also barely audible—a moaning that sent a blade of terror into her heart. She saw Agares in the shadows, chin down, arms stiffly at his sides, and heard something—a sound of rending. And then, passing the pillar, she looked up and, struck as if by a hammer, fell to her knees.
Twenty feet above the puddled floor, suspended by her wrists from a sinew and bone hanger, was Ardat Lili. Lilith saw her traveling skins lying in a heap far beneath her feet and saw, too, the six tiny statues arranged carefully, ludicrously, upon them. With a chuckle, Adramalik picked up Lilith by her neck and tossed her easily to the floor at her handmaiden’s feet. Lilith landed upon her back and with flailing arms and legs scrabbled upright. Spattered with splashed blood, she looked up and saw her handmaiden’s dangling body, alive with the rippling subdermal movement of hundreds of flies. Lilith knew what he was doing. Beelzebub was feeding, consuming everything within and liberating Ardat’s skin just as he had done to all the other undead skins above.
Ardat Lib sighed and somehow Lilith heard it above the buzzing, above her own screams. The Prime Minister turned to her, and the haunted look in his eyes made his feelings clear.
“Nergar’s police took her just as she was exiting the Keep,” said Adramalik crisply. “The Prince warned you, Consort, warned you to keep your affairs… simple. Instead you involved her.”
Lilith’s breath came in huge gulping gasps. Time passed and stood still. Somewhere in her mind, between the terror and the anguish, a horror was unfettered—the guilty understanding that, as much as she had cared about Ardat, she had used her zealous, trusting handmaiden and was solely responsible for her miserable end.
Lilith looked up. The Prince—her Prince—was almost done. What had been Ardat Lili was little more than a flapping skin-sack, hollow and empty, yet aware. Exiting flies issued from her mouth, swarming around her flaccid skin, examining their handiwork.
As Lilith watched, the rack begin to ascend, carrying the pathetic skin up into the gloom of the dome, and she heard Adramalik’s soft laughter and splashing footsteps fade away. Only the Prime Minister remained with her and the Prince. He stood over her and reached down, putting his hands under her arms and legs and lifting her carefully.
Agares carried her through the Rotunda, and when he brought her back to her chambers and laid her gently upon her skin-covered pallet the only thing circling erratically through her mind like a fly was the droning sound of the Voice that had oscillated through the dome.
“Remember this, dear Lilith. She will.”
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Eligor studied him as he sat motionless upon his throne. Far away, deep beneath the Audience Chamber floor, he thought, he could hear the distant sounds of new construction. The barely audible, muffled clink of hammers upon stone was all that disturbed the stillness of the enormous chamber. He knew that the faraway hammering had to be of native stone being worked; the flesh-bricks always cried out when they were being cut and placed.
Sargatanas, too, seemed far away. He had returned to his palace in silence and had remained there, not leaving his throne and speaking only briefly to Halphas and then to no one for days. Eligor and the dozen Guard troopers stood some paces from Sargatanas like a frozen tableau. Once a day, for some hours, a dim shaft of Algol’s red light would enter through the oculus and pirouette upon the floor, marking time, only to fade away as if it were sad to be ignored.
Sargatanas sat, only occasionally lifting or lowering his flaming head. A few times he raised a finger to his lips as if he were about to speak but then changed his mind. Through the night he did not stir, the only sign of life being the guttering sparks from his knit brow. His form shifted frequently, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically. For one night he had no head at all, only concentric multicolored rings of flames with rotating horns at their center.
It is strange, Eligor thought, to see my lord like this. So deep in thought and yet not exactly brooding. Eligor’s mind wandered back to the events of recent days and he realized that Sargatanas had more than enough upon which to reflect. Certainly their treatment in Dis was disappointing and redolent of darker implications. But Dis had brought unexpected rewards as well; Lilith had surprised them all. The imminent war with Astaroth, too, was something to address, something that always took much planning, albeit with the general staff. And then there was that soul, Eligor remembered, that insolent female soul. What had she stirred up? She had obviously affected his lord, though why Eligor could not be sure. Never had he been so happy to see a soul so transformed.
Sargatanas shifted his torso and Eligor saw him trace Valefar’s sigil in the air. It was the first real action the Demon Major had taken in days, and Eligor felt something ineffable in the pit of his stomach. There was a decisiveness in the movement that contrasted with Sargatanas’ earlier seeming lethargy.
Whether he had been concerned for his master and waiting outside the vast chamber or he had used other occult means, Valefar appeared at the arcades startlingly quickly. Walking briskly, resplendent in tissue-thin embroidered skins, he climbed the steps to the dais three at a time and bowed deeply, formally, before Sargatanas. He, too, seemed to sense something.
Eligor stood closer to the throne than the Guard and always heard his lord’s conversations. He thought of it as a privilege of rank.
“Prime Minister,” Sargatanas said, staring fixedly into Valefar’s eyes, “I have no stomach for it anymore.”
“I know, Lord,” said Valefar softly. “It was that soul, was it not?”
“She made me see them all as… people.”
Valefar was silent.
“Before that moment, Valefar, they were nothing. I resented them and, because of that, I used them. As we all did. But now, when I pull back after all of these many eons, I see with clarity what this place is… and how I cannot endure it, as I see it now, any longer.” He paused. “It is time for change, time to make a stand. Time to do instead of dream.”
“My lord?”
“The incessant wars. Old Astaroth upon our border, hungry and desperate. What will happen when we destroy his legions as we surely will? Nothing. We will appropriate his broken wards, rebuild them with uncounted souls, and return to our co
mplacency. Hell will not change. And neither will we; we will still be here, exiled, punished… rejected.”
“Rejected?”
“By Those Above.”
“That is our lot.”
“For how long? Eternity? When will the Fallen have had enough punishment?”
There was silence and Eligor worked at the question in his own mind. “For some,” Valefar said with no irony, “there can never be enough punishment.”
“And what of us? We are not like the others—like Beelzebub and the rest. Must we share their fate forever?”
Valefar returned Sargatanas’ gaze and for a moment said nothing. Eligor held his breath.
“What you are suggesting cannot be done. We cannot go back.”
“I would try,” Sargatanas said evenly. “I do not know if we can or not—if accepting our responsibility in the War is enough. Or if pleading our remorse can absolve us. I do not know, Valefar. I do know that I cannot live in this place, as it is—under the Fly—and that I would destroy all this, this palace, this city, this world, and myself as well, if only to look upon His Face again for an instant.”
Sargatanas rose. He described the sigils of the Barons Zoray and Faraii in the air before him, sending them on their way with a dismissive twitch of his hand.
Valefar approached him and, to Eligor’s surprise, embraced the Demon Major. He then dropped to one knee.
“My lord, my friend, let me be your fiery right hand, your burning torch to light your way back. And to flame the very streets of Dis, if need be.”
“I would have it no other way, Valefar.”
Eligor walked before the two demons and sank to his knees as well.
“Lord, I, too, have heard all that you have said. I would be your left hand and, in it, the uncleavable shield that protects you.”
Sargatanas, smiling, bade them both stand.
“We have many preparations. As of this moment, we must regard ourselves as a state apart in this world. A renegade state. Therefore, Prime Minister, I need you to go quietly and quickly to the Lesser Lords Andromalius and Bifrons and bring them here. As my clients they will have no choice but to come. And no choice but to support me.”
And to Eligor he said, “Henceforth, in this new time, you and your Guard will have to add secret police to your list of many tasks. I must know of the shifting thoughts of those closest to my throne. As seemingly unimpeachable as my inner circle is, no one is safe from corruption.”
Valefar bowed and withdrew, and Eligor nodded, resuming his station just behind Sargatanas. As Eligor watched the figure of the Prime Minister diminish across the wide floor, he saw the distant, fiery-headed forms of the demons Faraii and Zoray emerge from the arcades. It would be interesting, Eligor thought, to watch their reactions to his master’s plans. As it would all of Hell’s.
Chapter Twelve
DIS
For the first time that any demon could remember, Algol could be seen during the day in Hell’s troubled sky, blazing bright and luminous. Like a blood-filmed eye, Adramalik thought, staring out from his window in the uppermost level of the Keep. What did the Watchdog look down upon that engendered such anger?
The Chancellor General looked out at his city far below. Normally dark and lit only by patches of spontaneous random fires, it now looked painted with blood. Algol’s furious brush had daubed the roofs, the streets, the statues, the many-spired, huge edifices, and even the Keep itself in red. A world bathed in the blood of its souls. That, he thought, would be a more perfect world.
He found the vivid light beautiful, evocative, an artifact of the star so compelling that he sat on the window-ledge until Algol set. The city returned to its former self, dark and mysterious, its shades of black cloaking the horrors that he had helped create.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Eligor, too, watched the star set as he waited for Baron Faraii to join him. Its remarkable fading light turned the Acheron into a shimmering red snake sinuously meandering through the city. He looked down at the bricks of the dome’s parapet upon which he sat and saw a half-dozen souls’ eyes staring out, the ruddy light reflected sharply in their glassy surface. What were they thinking?
Eligor heard the distant flapping of wings and saw one of his patrols circling high above him. Evidence of what Sargatanas had called a heightened readiness. He turned and cast his eyes up at the enormous dome behind him. Giant braziers were inset into its curving, otherwise smooth wall, spaced evenly around and reminiscent of the flaming coronet that sometimes encircled Sargatanas’ head. At the moment, Eligor noted, they were an ineffective light source against the last rays of Algol.
The Baron was late, something that had been happening more and more frequently in the course of their meetings. Eligor wondered if there was some significance to this, whether it indicated a growing unwillingness on the Baron’s part to continue their discussions about his travels. He valued the talks, realizing at that moment just how much he would miss them if they ended. The Baron was a vivid storyteller and his wanderings made for compelling listening, but more than that, Eligor found the demon’s enigmatic personality fascinating. Faraii had proven himself time and again in the hundreds of wars he had fought in for Sargatanas; his weapons-skill and ferocity were unmatched and did not go unnoticed. Eventually, because of his indisputable prowess, his lord had seen fit to commission Faraii to create a special unit of shock troops composed of the most intimidating of Sargatanas’ newly fashioned legionaries. But, even with this honor, Faraii rarely spoke of his battlefield exploits, and this only lent more luster to Eligor’s opinion of him. Unconsciously Eligor clutched his vellum notebook and bone pen a bit tighter, as if they, too, might cease to be, along with the meetings.
He sat in a rare state of anticipation; this was the first time since Sargatanas’ amazing decision that Eligor would be alone with Faraii, and he was eager to hear the Baron’s thoughts away from the constraints of the court. The Baron was more than forthcoming about his journeys, but it was rare that he spoke of his own feelings.
Algol had just set when Eligor heard the light scrape of the Baron’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs that led to the balcony. Wearing his black Abyssal-spine sword on a decorated baldric, he was armored as commander of the Shock Troops. Broad, thick pieces of blackened and tempered bone overlay his segmented torso, each skillfully fit piece inlaid with obsidian and jet. Special vents edged the cuirass, allowing flames to lick outward in the heat of battle. Though Faraii’s was a lighter version of the armor his troops possessed, Eligor had seen how intimidating the effect could be.
“Eligor, I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” Faraii said. “I was drilling my troopers and time got away from me.”
“They are, without a doubt, the best trained of any troops in Hell,” Eligor said enthusiastically, “solely for their commander’s diligence.”
“Thank you. Coming from the Captain of the Flying Guard, that is high praise.”
Eligor smiled. He knew that his Guard was drilled as well, if not as often, but coming from Faraii the compliment was gratifying. Eligor also knew that while his winged Guard relied on speed and precision, Faraii’s heavy legionaries were a bludgeon, a nearly irresistible force upon the battlefield. Where the Guard was a lance, sharp and swift, the Shock Troops were Sargatanas’ hammer, prized and pampered for their brutality.
Eligor looked closely at Faraii’s breast-armor. “There is ash upon your chest. Are you injured?”
Faraii looked down and, indeed, a wide, dull pattern of ash clouded the high, black gloss of the armor.
“It is not mine, Eligor. One of the troopers got a bit too excited. I had to… correct him.”
Faraii unstrapped the long sword and, setting it beside him, sat down heavily on the parapet’s low wall. He looked out at the remaining sliver of Algol’s light as it sank behind the horizon. Eligor saw the weariness in his actions, the angle at which he held his hard, gaunt head.
“Our lord has chosen to pl
ace a heavy burden upon us all,” Faraii said, not taking his gaze from the city.
“We are at the start of something great, Faraii,” Eligor countered. “All great endeavors are a challenge.”
Faraii did not respond immediately but instead looked at his feet.
“I wonder if our lord truly knows what forces he may unleash.”
Eligor looked at the Baron.
“I am sure he knows exactly what he is starting,” Eligor said earnestly. “His powers and influence have never been greater. Believe me, this was not a decision that came easily. I stood beside him for days and nights while he considered it. He is certain the time is right.”
“What he is certain of, Eligor, is that he cannot stand another moment of this place and his subservient standing here. And this reminds me of someone else.”
“Really, Faraii, you cannot seriously compare—”
“Why not? From what I have heard there were few Demons Major as zealous as Sargatanas when it came to supporting Lucifer. And like him, our lord aches for something he cannot have.”
Eligor put the notebook and pen down beside him.
“We were all caught up in Lucifer’s rhetoric,” he said plainly. Something was clearly troubling the Baron. “Look around you, Faraii. We are all defined by this place, by the fire and the flesh. And the pain. We, like the souls, are Hell’s inmates. But we are also their jailers. Is this how you would choose to spend Eternity? As little more than an embittered jailer?”
“Perhaps,” Faraii said quietly, gloomily. “Is Sargatanas’ rhetoric all that different?”
“I thought that I knew you better than this, Baron.”
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