Adramalik had not seen Beelzebub this agitated since the early times—not since the wars of territory that had carved up Hell so long ago. He looked then at Agares, who had been silently listening. Why was I not brought in on the earliest discussions of battle plans? Why Agares… why is he so favored? I will have to watch him.
A growing commotion drew the demons’ attentions toward the center of the room, where they saw a gathering of many-legged, chittering creatures scrabbling in a flailing mound to climb atop one another. Each one’s body was unique in shape and looked like an animated chunk of flesh, ragged and moist. Only a few bore single pallid eyes. In a frenzy of many-jointed legs they clawed themselves upward into a roughly demonic shape, a shape that, after a series of shudders and ripples, smoothed its form and became the Conjuror General, Agaliarept. He gave one more spasmodic twitch of his many arms—arms that had been legs moments earlier—and turned to confront the demons.
Adramalik heard his sibilant voice, a hissing like the venting of steam, issuing from the mouths of a hundred suspended bricks.
“Look,” the Conjuror said, and pointed at the floor. A pattern of bricks was already in place, and when he touched the closest brick it began to whine, setting off its neighbor, until the entire line, which disappeared into a wall, was noisily active.
“While I have not yet found her, I have finally found Faraii, my Prince. His domicile lies deep within a glyph-guarded building atop the central mount of Adamantinarx. Just as you suspected. It would seem that he has been confined to his chambers after his actions at Maraak,” Agaliarept added. “I summoned you because I have, just this hour, found a way in.”
Even in the gloom, Adramalik could see the Prince’s smile.
“That is welcome news, Agaliarept. The Baron has always been my insurance against the day that Sargatanas became difficult. With his help we will open up a second front on the Lord of Adamantinarx.”
Without waiting for a signal Agaliarept’s many mouths began to move, each one murmuring a different incantation until Adramalik had the sensation that a crowd of conjurors stood around him. Agaliarept’s eyes rolled and bubbling foam from his lips dottled his cowl and when, in the course of his trance, he trained his wand-arms upon the floor, just behind the bricks that were already aglow, these began to arise, separating and assembling themselves with screeches and small puffs of blood.
Before a few moments had passed, a four-armed figure stood upon a single thick pillar before the assembled demons—a brick construct nearly as tall as a demon. A large soul-mouth trembled in what seemed like its round head, and its overlong arms terminated in bricks with vacant eye sockets.
“Do it… do it now, my Prince,” Agaliarept croaked hoarsely. “We must act now or the glyphs will find us.”
Beelzebub coughed loudly and protruded his long, black tongue, and upon it Adramalik saw a fly trembling. It was slick with saliva, and its back was fiery green with tiny glyphs. The Prince withdrew it slightly and stepped up to the brick figure, clasping its oversized head in his hands, distended his proboscis, thrusting the fly deep into the slack soul-mouth. Adramalik heard a barking cough and knew that it was done. They watched the dull green glow of it as it descended into the bricks, gathering speed through the opening conduit on its way toward Adamantinarx. He and the other demons immediately grasped a waving arm and placed their eyes over the empty sockets, watching as the millions of soul-brick eyes between the Conjuring Chamber and Faraii’s chamber winked open and the darkness parted.
Their view through the countless eyes was less than perfect; a certain clarity was lost to the distances, the vast number of eyes needed to peer across so large a distance, and the overall gloom of the chamber.
Faraii was sitting upon the floor of a room that had been at once austere and elegant. Rage had visited that room, though, and in its wake had left a tableau of utter chaos. In the half-light it appeared that the room and its contents had been torn apart, clawed and mangled to be thrown in every corner. By turning the brick slightly, Adramalik could see once carefully worked wall hangings of stitched flesh lying in shreds, rent floor mats woven of tough Waste-veins, and fractured personal objects of every description looking like the jumbled and broken bones of so many skeletons.
But to the Chancellor General, the terrible centerpiece of the room was unquestionably the Baron himself. He was not as Adramalik remembered him, not the quiet, confident, self-contained demon who had wandered into Dis from the Wastes. Faraii sat awkwardly, still in his armor, almost as if he had been dropped upon the floor, his head canted to one side. His unblinking, glittering eyes were staring into someplace deep within himself as, with long, deliberate strokes, he slowly honed the black sword that lay across his lap. Like a creature from the Wastes, captivity does not suit him, thought Adramalik wryly. Thus has the Great Lord Sargatanas rewarded him for Astaroth’s overdue death.
A mouth in a brick, a darkness within the darkness, opened behind Faraii, and Adramalik saw, somewhat indistinctly, a glow ascending from the wall’s depths. The bright, emerging spark of Beelzebub’s emissary paused upon the crushed lower lip and then took wing, entering the room to hover momentarily behind the oblivious seated figure. Purposefully it flew the short distance to Faraii’s head and alighted, and still the Baron took no notice.
Boldly, the fly crossed Faraii’s forehead, scuttling over his bony brow, and, clawing under his hard eyelid, disappeared underneath. The hand that held the whetstone paused above the blade as a faint ring of luminous green limned Faraii’s trembling eye. It lingered for a few seconds and then faded. Adramalik saw the hand still poised above the black blade and then saw it slowly dip down to finish the stroke. With each following moment the strokes became quicker, firmer, more assured.
Then, unexpectedly, the mask that had been the Baron’s face cracked as the thinnest smile crept over his face, a smile not dissimilar from the one that had played upon Beelzebub’s face only moments before.
Adramalik thought about that smile as he left the other demons and headed back to his rooms and grinned himself. Sargatanas, together with his few misguided followers, would soon be stopped, and Adamantinarx would lie broken. And the bitter Acheron would flow around a new city and the ash would fall and the smoke of the new fires would rise and Hell could go back, without contest, without distraction, to the primacy of punishment.
As Adramalik drew nearer to his chambers he remembered the delight that awaited him and felt himself growing excited, succumbing, once again, to the powers of the flesh. As tired as he was, he would finish what he had started with the creature. But upon arriving at his doors the Chancellor General noticed them unlatched and slightly ajar, and pushing them apart, he made his way deeper into his rooms with a growing haste and sense of misgiving. Only when he arrived at his bedchambers did he find his worst suspicions confirmed. Gnawed and bloodstained sinew ties lay upon the floor. The wretched Skin-peeler had somehow escaped, chewed through its bonds and slipped away to some recess of the Keep, undoubtedly well away by now. Or, perhaps, even now, was being used by one of his Knights; Adramalik would never know. Sadly, there was no one to butcher and bleed for the mistake; he could only curse himself for not locking the doors. It did not matter now, he thought with a resigned shake of his head; pleasure was always ephemeral. He lay down upon his pallet and when he closed his eyes he thought about Faraii, far away, sharpening his sword in the darkness.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Lilith cried out in the night and sat up drawing the thick sleeping skins about her for comfort. She had been with Ardat Lili again, had been held in her warm, comforting embrace once again, and the dream’s realism left Lilith panting, thinking that she was back in her bone-paneled chambers in Dis.
The room was cold and dank and she was clammy from her tossing about. She shucked off her covers and rose, the warm air caressing her bare skin as she crossed to the closed window. Unlatching it, she stood in the room’s darkness, breathing in the warmer air a
nd gazing out into the night at Adamantinarx, reassured that the world outside her had indeed changed.
A beautiful, ruddy fog had crept in off the Acheron to swathe the great city in soft, nocturnal mystery. She could not see the slow-flowing river or the distant quays that lined it. Nor could she see the city’s walls or gates or even the barracks that were situated on the near side of the walls. What she could see was the flickering points of fire that sketched out the nearer streets and the indistinct shapes of spires and towers and statues that tentatively probed the sky, fearful in their wavering forms, it seemed to her, of vanishing into it.
The scuff of footsteps below her window caused her to lean forward and peer directly down at the expansive courtyard that lay, bordered by Adamantinarx’s most important buildings, across the uppermost portion of the citadel. It served and would serve again, she had learned, in times of war as a gathering space and parade ground for Eligor’s Flying Guard but was now empty of demons save for the curious procession of demons that she saw emerging slowly from within her own building.
A cohort of Foot Guard led by Lord Zoray marched slowly forth from the wide door followed by two heavily robed figures whom she thought she recognized as the Lords Eligor and Valefar. And directly behind them was a larger figure, also cloaked, that could only have been Sargatanas. Back, at last, from the battlefield of Maraak. More Foot Guard brought up the rear of the line of figures, and as she watched them begin to cross the courtyard Eligor turned suddenly and looked up toward her window. Lilith pulled back reflexively, hoping the darkness hid her paleness, and, upon an impulse, decided that she would follow them.
She had packed Ardat Lili’s traveling skins, more as a reminder of her great loss than as a useful garment, but now she drew them on, grateful for their concealing folds. The scent of her handmaiden, still clinging to them, mingled with that of the Wastes. Lilith was still pulling the hood around her as she ran soundlessly along the corridor and down the wide stairs to the ground floor.
Lilith cautiously pulled the door open and saw that the spectral procession had nearly crossed the courtyard. She waited until they had disappeared behind the corner of a building before she ventured out into the fog. They had turned onto the street known as the Rule, which descended, arrow straight from the mount’s crest, and eventually ended at the docks on the river’s edge. This bolstered her confidence; still a newcomer to Adamantinarx, she dreaded trying to find her way about the city’s countless twisting streets.
As she rounded onto the Rule she saw the small demon contingent already a hundred yards ahead, their swaying forms generalized by the fog. A progression of three-story buildings, each with an overhanging jetty, lined both sides of the street, dropping gradually until she could only discern their hair-topped roofs. Dozens of receding braziers, their diffused, orange glows like soft stars, lit the relatively narrow street as it descended in long steps. Few demons trod upon its worn and fog-slicked flagstones, but many souls were performing their regular and unending tasks, taking little or no notice that it was so late at night. Their torments knew no hours.
Lilith’s clawed feet left dry prints upon the warm flagstones as she made her way down the street. She kept enough distance from the small procession as she felt was safe, but all the while she wondered, as they never seemed to arrive at any destination, just how far from the citadel they would go. Doubt began to slow her steps somewhat. This quiet mission of Sargatanas’, surely it was of no concern to her. What would he say if he knew that he was being shadowed by her? They had not even seen each other since her arrival.
Something drove her on nonetheless. Perhaps, she worried, a part of her mind was intoxicated with her newfound freedom and this almost inexplicable adventure was, in some way, a reflection of her clouded judgment. Or maybe it was something about Sargatanas, himself.
She passed silent crowds of souls—specters that were made solid as she drew near, some carrying mortar or wheeling brick-carts made of bone or burdened with skins or tools or metal fittings for building. Some looked at her directly, but none penetrated her disguise. She returned their gaze, studying their misshapen faces and seeing in most the unmistakable mark of evil. Only a few among many seemed out of place, confused and terrified. Those, especially were her souls, the human beings she had spent her time in Hell caring for. As she looked from one to another she wondered whether she had placed her faith in the wrong cause and whether their redemption was unattainable.
She glanced up and recognized a pair of twisting, smoke-belching spires that rose from the Forges, a landmark that she knew marked the halfway point between the palace and the quays. Even through the mask of her skins she could smell the airborne residue of the smelters and dozens of weapon forges. The number of bone-carts carrying weapons to the barracks rose dramatically as she passed the grimy building.
Farther down the Rule, Lilith encountered the dwellings of skin stitchers, the long drying racks loaded with skins visible through their courtyards, as were the stacks of skinned souls that writhed slowly by the gutter. The low demons sat in small knots chanting in throaty whispers in time with their sewing. Two thick-set gristle-dogs suddenly bolted from one courtyard directly in front of her, grabbed the arm of one of the discarded souls, and began to noisily growl and snap at each other, their white eyes bulging. They managed to twist and tear it free, and with foam flying in arcs they disappeared back from whence they had come. The soul gurgled something and went silent.
Lilith found it difficult to watch these unfolding tableaus. After all these millennia it was still hard for her to reason through what could be done about the souls, harder with the knowledge that the activities of souls in Hell were so integral to keeping it running. She knew it would not be easy to convince any demon in Hell—even, perhaps, Sargatanas—to reform their policies toward the souls. But, she was convinced, it needed to be done, and beginnings were always hard.
Eventually, looking past the demons she was shadowing, Lilith saw the oxbow of the Acheron, shining from the fires in the skies above and looking like a ribbon of copper suspended in the fog. If she had not known that it flowed with heavy tears she might have mistaken its reflective brilliance for lava. Dim shades of cargo barges occluded the river’s brightness in shifting patches, as did the very occasional passing of formations of flying demons. So beautiful was the sight that she stopped in the middle of the Rule, for a moment, and put her hand to her mouth. And for the thousandth time told herself how lucky she was to be away from Dis.
Sargatanas and his party had continued down the street and she hurried to catch up. Presently she found her surroundings shifting toward those of the docksides where great square buildings rose, their portals agape, awaiting off-loaded goods from Sargatanas’ many wards. In the distant past, when the city was young, she knew these enormous warehouses had been filled to overflow and the streets around them had been virtually impassable. Now they stood, for the most part, disused and hollow, their bricks looking about sullenly.
The distant fires in the sky abruptly died away and Lilith saw the return of the river to its misty, luminous pallor. She welcomed the deepening gloom, as it made her clandestine trailing of the demons considerably easier.
Keeping to the shadows of the looming buildings, she edged closer to the demons ahead of her. They filed out of the foot of the Rule and marched toward a plain bone and iron gateway that protested loudly when it was unlocked and opened by Valefar. Lilith had never been this close to the embankment, and when Sargatanas, Valefar, and Eligor and their Guard passed through the gate and began to descend a flight of unseen stairs she had no idea what lay beyond. When the last of the Foot Guard had disappeared she cautiously made her way across a hundred yards to the gate. The sad Acheron was much louder here, she realized, its thick, opalescent waters swirling in slow eddies as it passed before her while a strong wind blew from across the river, tearing at her skins. Low, ululating wails broke the pervasive background sound of the river’s sobbing, and she felt her
limbs grow heavy with the burden of the tear-laden spray that touched her face. Nearly all of Hell, she knew, was built on a foundation of fury, but this river, as deceptively languid as it appeared, was every bit as powerful. It etched its meandering course through the landscape with those most bitter of waters—the waters of misery. Lilith closed her eyes tightly against the fine spray and felt her body shudder. After a few moments she forced herself to open her eyes and peer down to the river’s edge, where she saw a short salt-encrusted jetty that ended somewhere beneath the opaque water.
Lined up along the near portion of the jetty were the Foot Guard, silent and motionless save for the muffled flapping of their cloaks. Farther out, flanked by Valefar and Eligor, who held his sword and robes, was Sargatanas, stripped and poised at the water’s edge. His dark, powerful body, contrasting sharply against the pale waters, was more human, albeit much larger, than she would have expected, and it was quiescent—not undergoing any of the transformations of which she knew it was capable. For a full minute he stood immobile, like one of the innumerable statues that dotted the city above. The fire atop his head was growing and whipping about and he was slick from the spray, and she marveled at the control she knew he must be exercising. He was so still that she was distracted momentarily by a floating skeletal torso that bounced listlessly against the jetty and spun away. Her eyes focused back upon him as he stepped forward.
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