God's Demon

by Wayne Barlowe

  Adramalik looked up, past the Prince atop his throne. The dangling skins were in a constant state of agitation, creating a palpable breeze within the Rotunda and stirring the rank smells of its contents. The battle in the city below must have been affecting them.

  “All is in readiness for him. We have fielded every last legion, and the Keep Wall is fully alive.”

  “I think it will not be enough, Prime Minister. He is a determined heretic.”

  Adramalik said nothing; there was little more that could be said or done than what his master had already implemented.

  Adramalik never dreamt—that was for souls and beasts. But when he had returned to his chambers and laid down upon his pallet after his impossible exertions supervising the demolition of Dis, he had come close. Perhaps, he thought, what he had seen was more of a vision. Whatever it had been, it was brief and disquieting.

  It had begun with him standing upon the wall, watching as countless gangs of souls hastily labored to finish its construction. He watched, too, how methodical their demon Overseers were as they efficiently prodded the shuffling, whimpering souls—most only recently able to move about again—into place while the soul-masons positioned them with precision. And he saw them transformed, course after gray course of them, into the heavy bricks that comprised the great, soaring structure. He looked down in his dream and saw their many thousand black, protruding orbs dotting the wall’s flat, curving surface and was amazed and pleased.

  When he turned, it was with the expectation of seeing the Black Dome rising skyward just as he knew it, but it was not there and a clenching fear gripped him. In its place, when he peered in astonishment at where the Keep should have been, there was instead a gaping hole, frost edged and impenetrable in its darkness. He knew what the hole was; he had seen it for himself. The unforgettable stench of it filled his nose as he stared once again into the entrance to Abaddon’s realm, and now fear gave way to panic. From within that maw he could hear the distant sounds of moving bodies beyond count scuffling and scraping and also, most disconcertingly, their faint echoing cluttering cries. Suddenly an inward rush of air began to suck at the foot of the wall, breaking it apart and dragging chunks toward the Pit, and in seconds a spiraling maelstrom of soul-bricks was disappearing into the darkness. Adramalik took wing but to no avail. His wings could only claw futilely at the cold air as he was dragged down. Just when he was even with the icy lip of the Pit did he jolt awake, jittery and panting.

  Only with some effort could he get the image of the Pit from his mind, and when he realized that he was not at its blasted, icy-rimmed edge but, instead, in the Rotunda, inattentive to his Prince, Adramalik swallowed hard.

  “…is this not so, Prime Minister?”

  “Yes. My Prince,” he said, and had no idea what he was so readily agreeing to.

  The buzzing paused.

  “And what of the Keep itself and its defenses?”

  “Mulciber is locked away and embedded, maintaining the wall just as you instructed, my Prince. The four legions of Keep Janissaries are in position awaiting any potential breach of the gate.”

  From the corner of his eye, Adramalik saw Agares shuffling slowly away from the foot of the throne and toward the sphincterlike threshold. Beelzebub seemed to take no notice. Probably on his way to his miserable chambers. And why not? He is of no use anymore.

  “The Husk?” the Prince asked.

  “He is one level below us with Knight-Brigadier Melphagor and as many of my Knights as I felt I could spare from the battlefield.”

  All this to defend our Hell, Prince, the Hell that you kept in line for so long. The Hell that, indeed, Sargatanas and his followers helped build and would now destroy. For what? His delusional aspirations? He is no heretic; that is where you are wrong, my Prince; he is simply a fool!

  Adramalik looked up at the Prince and, not for the first time in recent memory, wondered what it might be like to be Regent of Hell. As this rebellion had grown Adramalik had, in the darkness of his chambers, considered the many ramifications of overthrowing his master. He had never gotten far in his speculations; the impossibility of the act caught him up short every time. Beelzebub was far too strange and unpredictable and powerful to attempt anything against, even as distracted as he was. And so Adramalik had never taken the time to seriously consider a period after the Prince’s destruction. But now, with Sargatanas banging upon the Keep’s gate, anything seemed possible and Adramalik frequently wondered what he and his Knights could do.

  “Yen Wang’s Behemoths are being destroyed, Adramalik. They are falling, one by one.”

  “Yes, my Prince, your design of the wall was flawless,” Adramalik said without conviction. “It will take more than a few lumbering siege-beasts to take this Keep.”

  He saw Beelzebub’s finger trace the contour of Rofocale’s eye socket. “Leave me, Adramalik, before your patronizing words make me angry.”

  Adramalik bowed as low as he could, and, with eyes wide, he backed away and out of the Rotunda, relieved that he was still afforded the opportunity. His mind raced as he walked quickly back to the parapets. Was he just that close to being destroyed for so inconsequential a reason? Was it time to go down to his Knights and throw caution to the winds? Time to reach for the throne and either win or suffer the consequences?

  But a wave of true fear washed through him and, worse, the acrid, recalled smell of the Pit. And he knew with a sinking, bitter sensation of self-recrimination that, whatever his fate, it would not be linked to any attempted assassination of Beelzebub.

  * * * * *

  A jagged constellation of lights appeared faintly behind the lambent curtain of clouds that hung about the palace high atop the Keep. Eligor looked down as he flew and saw the new wall and the shimmering glow that it cast upon everything but the darkened, mantle-shrouded Keep within its confines. It is ever dark in there—but that will change. We will let in some light. He was finally growing fatigued and saw that the others around him were wavering as well, having difficulty maintaining the once-tight formations.

  Sargatanas’ command, the briefest of flashing glyphs, came as no surprise as Eligor neared the dome. He immediately angled downward, followed by the hundreds of Flying Guard behind, lances, hooks, and hammers at the ready. Sargatanas did not actually expect any resistance on the Black Dome’s exterior but had made Barbatos and Eligor drill his demons in that possibility nonetheless.

  As the dome drew nearer, Eligor saw nothing to indicate that any of the Fly’s troops were positioned to defend the regent’s palace. The great structure and its countless adjacent minarets were empty, and only a strong, buffeting wind seemed in place to defend the gigantic building.

  Eligor’s hooks found the spaces between the yielding flesh-tiles and bit deeply in. Feet firmly planted on the dome’s hot surface, he folded his trembling, weary wings and turned to watch the dark clouds of his descending troops as a thousand hooks reached out and they landed without mishap. A vertical wind like a hot vortex was rising from around the Keep, and Eligor and the myriad other demons’ garments flapped violently, but the hooks remained in place and soon the heavy siege hammers and prying claws were brought to bear. Their sound deadened by the wind and the softer flesh-tiles, the demons’ tools worked at the dark swell of the dome for what seemed like an eternity to Eligor. Hammers rose and fell in a fury of activity—activity that he knew was echoed around the dome by Barbatos’ demons—but even after many minutes there seemed to be hardly any damage done. There was little Eligor could do but watch and wait for the thick vault to be breached.

  * * * * *

  Through the billowing ash of battle, Mago, who never strayed too far from Hannibal, saw the dark expression fall upon his face and did his best to fight his way on foot to his brother’s side. Mago was a deft swordsman and in short time he had cut a path to the center of the line. The souls’ losses were heavy, or perhaps it seemed that way to Mago—the demons left no bodies and he saw only the hacked and broken forms
of Hannibal’s soldiers lying in deep ash and rubble. They were many.

  Hannibal saw Mago approaching but, at first, did not recognize him. Caked in sweat and ash and the black blood of his fallen comrades, he looked like all the other souls save for his distinctive weapon and demon-forged armor. To Hannibal’s eyes Mago looked tired, but his spirits seemed high. His sword was welcome; a bristling wall of Rofocale’s legionaries faced them and Hannibal had no time for greetings.

  Gaha was down on all fours, swiping with its huge front feet and swinging its heavy head to part the solid line of infantry just ahead. Hannibal parried a jabbing halberd and split its owner’s head from crown to chin, and even before his blade was withdrawn the demon was crumbling into lifeless rubble. Another halberd immediately took its place, and another, and the two brothers silently chopped at the enemy demons, leading their troops as they had done so long ago, until the line finally buckled and the enemy fell back.

  Breathing heavily, Mago said, “Brother, what is it?”

  “My last order from Satanachia,” he said, leaning from the saddle and wiping his face. “It weighs heavily upon me.”

  Mago pointed with his sword to another wave of gathering demons and Hannibal nodded.

  “No one considered that the Fly would destroy his own city and the ancient bridge to the Keep. Foolish… it is what I would have done! Satanachia has asked me… not ordered, Mago, asked… to bridge the Belt with a ramp.”

  “But what are we to use for this undertaking? We have brought no native stone to even attempt to ford the Belt!”

  “Think about it, Mago. What have we got in abundance?” Hannibal paused. The word was not going to come easily. “Souls,” he said hoarsely.

  Had this been part of Sargatanas’ plan all along—to take advantage of the souls’ presence, once again, as walking resources? To use him? Or, because the ground battle was always considered a diversion, did Sargatanas not care about its outcome? Hannibal would never know if the battle ended as his lord hoped.

  “No.” Mago’s drawn face was now a reflection, Hannibal imagined, of his own. “A promise was made.”

  “It is the only way… the old way.”

  “You cannot give that order, Brother,” Mago said flatly.

  “But I must. There is no other choice for me.” Hannibal’s gut twisted. For a moment, he remembered a fearful day long ago on the work-gang, a day when he had come altogether too close, himself, to becoming part of a ramp not unlike this one. Could he really order others to voluntarily do what he had been so afraid to do?

  “Hannibal, after the Flaming Cut you promised us that you would not let them use us in this manner again, that we would fight as souls and not be sacrificed as bricks. This battle hinges upon Sargatanas, not us. You’ve said it yourself… we will probably never see Heaven. It is his rebellion; let him make the sacrifices.”

  “If I—we want a voice here in Hell we have to earn it, Mago.”

  “When we are done with this, who will be left to speak with this voice, Hannibal?” Mago said accusingly.

  Hannibal turned to his first standard-bearer to issue the order and hesitated. How could he possibly explain how he was changing, what he was feeling, that sense that the mantle of destiny was his to don? But how could he betray their trust in him? Was he being selfish or realistic? And he suddenly realized that he did not care what happened to his souls so long as he was fulfilled, an emotion that had never been present in all his years as a commander in his Life.

  He stared at the oncoming line of enemy demons, and as he watched, he saw Satanachia’s right wing of legionaries shift position preparing to fill the gap that his souls would leave on the field after he issued his order. Satanachia knows me better than I know myself. He knows I will do it. He knows ambition.

  Hannibal looked back into his brother’s eyes and saw only the past—the past of his ancient human failures, the past of the Tophet fires and his eternal remorse. Mago, the brother who now served as a constant reminder of age-old pain, seemed to be pleading, hoping that Hannibal would do the human thing. Hoping he would cling to that despicable creature of the past.

  He motioned to his first standard-bearer and crisply barked the order for his army to disengage and make their way to the Belt’s edge, to the bank where the soul-ramp’s construction would begin. He would not look back again at the life that once belonged to Hannibal Barca.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  DIS

  Two of Satanachia’s battlefield Conjurors were waiting at the Belt’s edge when Hannibal and Mago arrived at the head of their army. Without ceremony they created their glyphs-of-conversion and proceeded to transform the front ranks of souls and almost instantly a cry went up from the surrounding multitude that was near. The demon legionaries on either side of the ramp’s foot had been given orders to act as both a screen and a funnel, keeping the vast majority of the soul army oblivious to the construction that was under way. When suspicions grew, Hannibal reassured his officers that the souls being used would be converted back at the end of the battle. But he knew that it was a hollow promise; much depended upon who would be victorious, and the souls that were converted were losing any chance they might have had to flee if the battle went to the army of Dis. Shouts of anger filled his ears.

  Forced at spear point, the souls that had been impressed dropped their weapons in a long running pile that followed the construction. The relationship between souls and demons had changed in mere moments; allies in battle had reverted to oppressors and victims.

  Mago’s expression was disbelieving, sour. Clearly, Hannibal saw, his brother disapproved of the treatment of the souls, of the reversion to their Infernal use, of his promise broken. But if there was one thing Hannibal knew, it was that once his mind had been made up there was no turning back. And now that it had, he marveled at how what had initially seemed a treacherous act against the souls now seemed to him like the greatest of opportunities. A twinge of terrific pain lanced through his shoulder, and as he saw the ramp’s foundation being laid he reached under his cloak and massaged the growing, tingling stump of his arm.

  * * * * *

  The cry went up, barely audible over the wind, from one of the six hammer-gangs attempting to breach the Dome, ending Eligor’s ineffectual attempts to see the battlefield below. Waist-deep in the heavily bleeding hole they had excavated, they were shouting that they were nearly through the dense, howling soul-brick exterior. Eligor flew to them and landed inside the shallow, inclined crater, his excitement mixed with a numbing sense of dread. To enter the Dome was to see Sargatanas’ vision through, to either lose him forever or watch him be crushed. Neither prospect appealed to the demon.

  He was hovering overhead with his picked assault team when the inevitable hammer-strike bit through the Black Dome’s roof. Strong hands held on to the heavy, protesting brick, lifting it out of the way, careful not to let it fall into the vast chamber below. Behind them, a hundred lance points directed at the hole awaited anything that might emerge from within, but only a dismal gloom, barely lighter than the surrounding dome, was visible. Even with the fierce winds he could smell the raw odor of the building’s interior, a heavy stink of decay that made him curl his lips.

  It seemed that no sooner had he sent his glyph off to alert Sargatanas than the Demon Major appeared in a flurry of sigils, glyphs, and spreading white wings. The intensity in his eyes was unmistakable as he peered into the hole and Eligor saw him reach down and, along with the Flying Guard, begin to pry away the heavy bricks at the rim of the hole. After an hour, the opening was enlarged sufficiently that three demons with wings extended could pass through at once—wide enough that the attack could begin.

  Eligor looked away from the hole, and by chance, for an instant, his eyes met Sargatanas’. No words were spoken, but the bond that had existed between them for so long, the tie between teacher and apprentice, the tie between ancient friends, held them. The wind suddenly grew stiffer and there was no chance either could hav
e heard the other, but Eligor saw Sargatanas smile, pull his sword—the sword Valefar had kept for him—from its sheath, and mouth the words, Heaven awaits. He raised his hand, sending a glyph skyward, and, with a deafening flapping of wings Eligor’s Flying Guard and Barbatos’ Flying Corps assembled three abreast in a long and precise column that stretched far up and away behind Sargatanas. Without another word, the Demon Major plunged headlong into the Black Dome with Eligor just behind.

  The moment he passed through the opening and began to drop he, like Sargatanas ahead of him, began to chop away at the myriad obstructing skins that hung from the cavernous dome-ceiling and clearing a vertical path for the flyers behind. The skins twisted and curled, agitated from either fright or the distant awareness of the battle far below, and each time Eligor slashed a rafter away he heard them cry out. They fell by the fluttering dozens, but not as fast as the demons’ diving descent, and when Eligor saw Sargatanas break free of the hangings, the blue-flame sword—his old sword—was pointing straight and true at the throne beneath them.

  Eligor looked down past his lord’s broad wings at the approaching Rotunda’s floor and clenched his jaw; the Fly’s troops were tearing wide the sphincter-threshold and streaming in from the one main corridor. How could Sargatanas have hoped to breach the dome’s ceiling and not alert its occupants? But the Guard’s Captain was distressed not only by the number of Keep Janissaries already assembled but also by Adramalik and the scarlet-clad Order Knights who led them. He recognized many of them, had fought against their brethren in the past, knew how dangerous they could be, and wondered, for just a chilling instant, if Sargatanas’ assault force would be capable of withstanding the collective fury of their glyph-flamed scimitars.

  Sargatanas pulled up just short of the top of the throne, but as Eligor sailed past him, followed by his Guard, he could not tell what his lord found atop the stinking mound. Eligor and his Guard slammed into the assembled legionaries with enough force to drive most of the standing demons to their knees. Ranks of the demons sprawled momentarily in the soup of blood and meat that filled the floor of the Rotunda. The Knights, however, managed to remain standing, having powerful, protective glyphs floating above, and with booming voices they rallied the Janissaries. A clot of them, flaming swords at the ready, surrounded something or someone, and when they parted Eligor saw, with dismay, that which had once been Baron Faraii. He stood with black blade bared and ebony armored as always, but his formerly gaunt body was now perforated in a thousand spots, hollowed as if there was nothing within. Tiny Abyssal worms played upon and through him, and these revolted Eligor. Faraii turned his pitted head, his one remaining eye glaring, and raised his sword toward Eligor and the onrushing demons.