“No demon should remain neutral,” said Sargatanas acidly. “As to what end… the end of all this. And a beginning—the beginning of our Ascent.”
“You do not really think—”
“I do think and I do dream, but I do not really know, Bifrons. What I do know is that I cannot shake my memories. Nor, I suspect, can anyone else present.”
Without waiting for an answer, Sargatanas turned and put a steaming hand upon the door latch. “Yours has been a long and tiring journey and I will send you on to your chambers shortly. But first it is important for you to understand what lies beneath my decision.”
He opened the door and Eligor could only see darkness beyond.
“We are directly below the throne in the Audience Chamber,” said Sargatanas. “I had construction begin on this… shrine when I decided my course.”
The others followed him, a dark silhouette outlined in a scalloped tracery of steaming embers, into the narrow vestibule, and the only faint illumination was from their flickering heads. Eligor could see, between the shadows of their passing and then only dimly, pale walls covered with neat lines of incised angelic inscriptions. He found that provocative, curious. It was a small heresy to write in the old style; it was a much larger one to commit that writing to scone.
The walls fell away on either side as they entered a larger, circular room. The hollowness of their footsteps echoed through the unseen reaches, making the group sound larger than it was. Sargatanas uttered a word and suddenly the room was suffused in pale light. The dark, cloaked figures of the five demons contrasted starkly with the luminosity of the space. Eligor’s jaw dropped and Valefar audibly released his breath, while the two visiting earls looked as if they might turn and run at any moment. All this Sargatanas measured as he stood back and watched the demons.
Eligor squinted, his eyes adjusting to the brightness. He took in the lambent room and realized that for all this to have been completed in such a short time—a matter of weeks—his lord must have driven Halphas and his laborers very hard. And then Eligor remembered the sounds of masons ringing through the long nights.
The joinery of the stones, their perfect dressing, and the care with which they were chosen all bespoke a level of craft that Eligor thought must have been augmented by an Art. Only the fairest, palest stones, laced with delicate veins of gold and silver, had been employed. The walls were punctuated at regular intervals with columned niches, each home, Eligor could discern, to a miraculous lifelike statue of a many-winged figure. The low-domed ceiling, hewn from an unimaginably huge pale-blue opal, flickered with flecks of inner fire, a perfect evocation, Eligor remembered, of the coruscating sky of the Above. Such a room, he knew, was not meant to exist in Hell.
But it was not the walls, nor the beautiful ceiling, nor even the heretical statuary that stirred the demons most. It was the running mosaics with tiles so small that Eligor could barely see them and the nearly floor-to-ceiling friezes and their incredible imagery that took the demons and wrenched them and pulled them in. And reminded them.
Each of the demons approached these shimmering murals and each walked slowly, silently, transfixed. Eligor found himself not looking at the friezes but into them, so rich was their execution, so vivid their portrayals. They began, at both sides of the room, with simple renderings of the Above, of the clear and glowing air, of the lambent clouds and the jeweled ground and the vast sparkling sea. And farther on, the great gold and crimson Tree of Life, heavy with its ripe, swollen fruit set amidst broad and sheltering leaves. Eligor saw, looking closely, the fabulous serpentine chalkadri flying through its boughs, their twelve wings picked out in rainbow jewels. He remembered their mellifluous calls and the Tree’s sweet fragrance and could not imagine how he might have forgotten them.
Eligor paused to look at his fellow demons. Thin wisps of steam, barely visible in the light, streamed from their eyes. The two earls had given them-selves over to the images and were breathlessly sidling along the walls, murmuring to themselves and each other. Valefar walked a few paces unsteadily, occasionally putting a tentative hand out upon the wall for support. And at the room’s center, standing by a raised altar and watching them all with his intent, silvered eyes, was the fallen seraph, a dark figure as immobile as the angelic statues that surrounded him.
Eligor turned back to the wall and saw the twelve radiant gates of the sun and the twelve pearlescent gates of the moon and the treasuries that housed the clouds and dew, the snow and the ice. There he saw the first depicted angels who guarded those storehouses, and it was a shock to see them, for he had tried very hard to forget their gracefulness.
Valefar, who was ahead of the other three demons, reached the farthest tableau, and something there that Eligor could not yet see caused him to cry out. He reeled backward, as if struck, nearly colliding with his lord. Sargatanas put out a hand and steadied his friend.
As if he were clinging to the side of a cliff with his hands, Eligor guided himself tentatively along the curving wall, examining its images, pausing to remember. The mosaic-bordered bas-reliefs showed more and more of the glittering hosts and their cities of light. Eligor knew what would follow: the ten greatest cities of creation, tiered like enormous steps upon the flank of the celestial mount, ascending toward the Throne.
These spired cities, crystalline and pure, filled with their multitudes of seraphim and cherubim, seemed, to his pained eyes, alive with the angels’ comings and goings. He was sure that he even recognized some of the angels, so great was the craft of the sculptors. In stone and jewels and metals the angels marched and sang and toiled, and as he looked at them Eligor recalled doing all of those things.
When he reached the foot of the Throne in all its soaring radiance he saw that it was surrounded by the six-winged archangels, swords in hand, singing praises as he had seen them do. The echoes of their celestial harmonies were so loud and the vision of them so real that he stumbled upon Andromalius, who, along with Bifrons, had reached the spot ahead of him. They were both upon their knees, gasping, hands outstretched against the wall. Eligor caught himself and, with pounding trepidation, looked upon the sublime Face of God. Its evocation was so glorious and terrible, so threatening and full of love, that he, too, exclaimed aloud. How did I forget? He found that he could not look away. Its beauty burned fiercely into his mind like a brand, like sparking iron—but not nearly as powerfully as when he had been in its presence so long ago. He could not control his shaking and, with steam blurring his vision, staggered away to where his lord and Valefar stood.
Sargatanas, his chest rising and falling, appeared moved by their reactions; Eligor heard his breath, deep and rhythmic like a bellows. He had not strayed from the room’s center, but in his hand, drawn from some hidden sheath, Eligor now saw a new-forged and unfamiliar sword, downward bent and vicious, wreathed in vapor and glyphs. A new sword—a Falcata—consecrated for a new war. Sargatanas held it up before him, and all of the demons’ eyes were drawn to it.
Looking at each of them in turn, the Demon Major said coldly, “Brothers, we will look upon that Face again.”
Chapter Fourteen
DIS
Lilith rocked on her heels, balled up, like something empty and windblown and discarded, cast into the corner of her bedchamber. It was dark and she wore the darkness like an old, comforting friend. Once, for a short time, she had been very much a creature of the night, and she still could see quite well in the blackness. Her precious carving tools were strewn about on the floor; she could see them and the torn and broken furnishings and the holes she had punched into the bone walls. She could see, too, the broken room partition, evidence of where the Order Knights, angered by her furious struggling, had thrown her. She did not need to see the bruises; they were obvious enough. She crouched in near darkness, the only light filtering in from a crack she had kicked into the door.
It had been weeks since Ardat Lili had been taken from her. Weeks of confusion and pain and darkness. She had determined to giv
e the Fly nothing willingly. His attempts at what he considered sex, while growing less frequent, were also growing more violent. Lilith feared that it was only a matter of time before she, too, swung high above his throne. Could he actually do that to me?
What would he tell Lucifer?
Her shaking subsided and she rose, unsteadily. Her clawed feet trod upon the bits and pieces of her few possessions as she crossed the room to the upended little table she had done her carving on. It was oddly unbroken—a survivor like her. She righted it and then went about searching for the few items she would need to summon her familiar. She had not done that since she had come to Hell and worried that perhaps she might not remember how. But try she would. The time of tears was over. Now was the time of action.
She had to get out, away from Dis. That much was clear. This last encounter had been too… invasive. And even as she had that thought, Lilith felt a small stirring and looked down. An errant spark-backed fly, having made its way from within her, was walking down her thigh. For an instant her eyes grew wide, and then, with a blindingly fast motion, she scooped it into her hand and then into a small metal urn that lay on the floor nearby. She narrowed her eyes and smiled. Fortune had given her that fly.
She resumed her search, finding some shards of bone, some torn skin from her bedclothes, the gold threads from a rent robe, and a needle. Carefully wrapping the skin around the bone armature, she stitched together a zoomorphic form, winged and clawed and with huge, empty eye sockets. She was a proficient sculptor, and when she had finished the small maquette she sat back and nodded approvingly.
Without hesitating she took up the needle and stabbed her palm until black blood, thick and hissing, dripped freely down her wrist. She picked up the assembled figure and caressed the blood into its wrinkled surface.
“Draw from me my pain, my little one,” Lilith whispered. “Draw from me my boundless sorrow and my timeless hatred. And take these things of mine, I adjure you, and lay them before the Lord of Adamantinarx.”
The small figure, its naked white skin smeared black, twitched and stretched. It jumped up and onto feet not unlike her own, gracelessly at first, and as its dangling, shriveled wings began to expand and flap it hopped toward her. A pinched mouth yawned open and then snapped shut. Lilith took up the urn and violently shook the angry fly out into her hand. She plucked its wings and held it in front of the night-creature’s beak. The familiar plucked it greedily from her fingers and gulped down its first meal. It cocked its oversized head and stared at her with its empty sockets, as if waiting for more.
“Good, good,” she purred menacingly. “You liked that. That was the taste of him.”
Lilith gestured a glyph into existence, blew it into the familiar, repeated the act, and then put the creature on her wrist. She walked to the broken door, peered out cautiously, and, seeing no one near, carefully squeezed the familiar through the widest part of the crack. It stood there on the flagstones just beyond, looking in at her inquiringly.
“Go now. Stay in the shadows and find the nearest window. Go to Adamantinarx; tell Sargatanas of my suffering. Give him that fly. And tell him I am coming.”
The familiar turned obediently and took wing and, just as she had ordered, disappeared silently into the gloom of the arched ceiling.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
The palace gates loomed large and imposing before Hani, their twin braziers creating enough deep shadows upon the surrounding buildings to conceal him. As he had predicted, it had been slow and tedious work gaining the palace entrance, and, now that he had, he could hang back, affording him an opportunity to rest and survey the area. He realized that actually getting through the gate might not be as hard as he had feared; so many workers passed within and so improbable was any threat from a soul that he was relatively sure no demon would question him, let alone look twice at him. He only needed to wait for a group of workers who were walking between soul-beast caravans. He waited for what seemed like hours and, marking that time, the Burden crept relentlessly upward through his torso. His fear was that he would find himself impaired, that the Burden would settle for a time in his head and make it impossible for him to accomplish anything for some while.
The jostling crowds flowed slowly through the gates like oozing lava, breaking sullenly around any obstacles that did not move quickly enough. But the soul’s patience was rewarded when he saw the giant bobbing heads of two soul-beasts, the vanguard of a pair of columns of similar creatures heading toward him. And between them was a melange of souls bound for work farther up the mount. Inwardly excited, Hani emerged from the shadows, his aquiline features set in an imitation of the dull, ravaged look worn by most souls. His gait, once again, matched the shambling stride of the workers. It was the best disguise—the only disguise—he could employ.
Passage through the gates went smoothly—no guards even looked at him. Armed warrior demons were everywhere, their officers hissing out commands and glyphs with what Hani thought was more urgency than normal. Between the lumbering bodies he saw guards stationed outside all of the residences and official buildings, ever watchful, he guessed, for spies.
He continued up the steep incline, the warm flagstones under his scuffing feet growing cooler as the winds grew. Looking up, he saw the enormous breastlike swell of the palace dome. At this distance its size took his breath away. Again the poison of self-doubt seeped into his veins. I can’t do this. What was I thinking? Secretly he pulled the little idol out of his side and ran his thumb over it for comfort. Look at what this thing has compelled me to do. I’ve risked everything on a dream. I don’t regret it, though. Fearing he might drop the idol amidst all of the shuffling feet, Hani pushed it back within himself.
The caravan threaded its way up toward the palace itself. The huge souls, spurred on by their cudgel-wielding mahouts, were burdened down with Abyssal hides, rolls of soul-vellum, and other luxury products from the remote towns of the Wastes. Palace bound, Hani suspected. He needed to actually enter the palace before separating from them and hoped he was right about their destination.
When they passed through the threshold, plodded to a halt in the great entry hall, and began unstrapping the cargo, Hani felt a mixture of satisfaction, relief, and then apprehension. He was inside Sargatanas’ palace! Hani was surprised at the feel of its interior; he had been prepared for something much darker, more oppressive. Instead, its bustling interior, brightly illuminated by fluorescing minerals set in sconces, conveyed a sense only of purposeful power, infernal bureaucracy untainted by true evil. Despite the building’s outwardly benign atmosphere, he knew that the hardest part of his journey still lay ahead; his goal to kneel before the feet of Lord Sargatanas might truly be impossible. Hani reached for a huge bundle of dark-scaled hides, and, hefting it up with some difficulty, he began to follow a string of souls who seemed to be heading deep into the building. An Overseer glanced at Hani, his wary, reflective eyes probing deeply but apparently finding nothing unusual. With a flick of the demon’s whip and the touch of it still stinging Hani’s back, he moved on, walking through a succession of long corridors until, in the distance, he saw a high, curving wall, its tiled surface broken at long, regular intervals by tall, column-framed entrances. Beyond them, he suspected, was the audience hall, but what lay between remained a mystery. Quite soon, he was going to have to break away from the workers and the security of numbers they afforded. As careful as he was, he could not help but wonder how far he could get before inevitably being spotted.
DIS
Lilith awoke to a quiet knock upon her broken door. She waited in the darkness, hoping she had only dreamt the sound, but when it came again she slowly went to the door and paused. She was emotionally exhausted; the idea of another encounter with Beelzebub and the resulting struggle was enough to make her numb. But something within told her that the knock had not come from one of the Order Knights; it had not been forceful enough.
“Consort, please open the door,” came the voice from
the corridor. “It is I, Agares.”
“So the Prince is now using his Prime Minister to fetch his plaything? You must be proud of your new position.”
“You misunderstand, Consort. Open the door, at least, so that we can talk.”
She knew that if he was not alone the door would not keep them from her. With a shrug she opened the door, expecting it to burst inward with the weight of Agares’ accomplices.
The Prime Minister, Lilith saw, was alone. He entered, bowed, and, closing the door behind him, stood back. In his arms was a bundle of clothes.
“I have come to get you out of here,” he said with quiet urgency.
“Why?”
“Because the Prince grows tired of you. And I will not be able to serve him with you up there… up above the throne.”
Lilith looked at him with some disdain. “So this is about you, then? You would not be happy with me dangling above you for eternity, looking down upon you, as I most assuredly would.”
“I am sorry, Consort; that was not quite how I meant it. Yes, I would be disturbed. But to survive I must be able to serve him without any… ah, impediment. And while I have no love for the Prince or his ways, I do recognize him as our regent pro tem. Until, that is, Lucifer should ever return.”
Lilith turned from him. “The hope still burns, eh?”
“Yes, Consort, it does.”
“And, perhaps, if he does return… and I do survive, why then, whoever was instrumental in my survival…,” she said. She nodded, smiling faintly. “I think I understand.”
Agares held out the traveling skins.
“I will tell the Prince, when he next summons you, that you are ill, that you have asked not to be disturbed. Given his feelings toward you, at the moment, I think he will welcome that. For a while, at least. I have arranged for a caravan to escort you—incognito of course—to virtually anywhere in Hell that you choose. Your destination is your own affair and how you dispose of the demons of the caravan, too, is your own business; I do not want to know. That is my parting gift to you; if I should be found out to have helped you escape… well, I will not be able to betray you at my… last moments.”
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