Nesha-tari turned her head the slightest bit, moving her hair on her shoulders and jutting out her chin.
“Oh, not that,” Balan said. “The package is delightful, in its way, but I am looking a good deal deeper.” The devil gave a broad and knowing smile. “I am looking at all those things you are trying to keep hidden from the world. Do you have any idea how beautiful you truly are, Soul Eater?”
Nesha-tari felt more profoundly naked before the devil than she ever had in her life, and yet it was not an entirely unpleasant sensation.
“May I ask an impertinent question?” Balan politely requested.
“Only if you answer a question of mine in return,” Nesha-tari said. She had never dealt directly with a devil before, but she knew that one never gave a creature such as Balan anything without receiving something in return.
“Very well,” Balan nodded. He narrowed his crimson eyes at Nesha-tari, and she understood that it would not do to lie.
“Just what manner of creature are you?”
“My father was human,” Nesha-tari said. “My mother is a Lamia.”
Balan looked thoughtful. He blinked once, eyes flashing for the moment like red lanterns.
“Lamia,” he said slowly. “A beautiful name for a beautiful beast. I don’t believe we have had one of those in here before.”
“It is my turn, Lord Balan.”
The devil spread his hands and bowed.
“Two nights ago, a Dragon flew over this city. Who was it?”
Balan sighed but kept grinning. “Ah, yes. She does seem to feel the need to announce her presence rather loudly, doesn’t she? That was the one I believe you call Danavod, the Great Black Wyrm.”
That came to Nesha-tari not as a surprise, but as confirmation. “Why is she here?”
“Shall we trade another question for a question?”
“Fine.”
“Then it is my turn to ask.”
Balan folded his arms and looked at Nesha-tari closely. His gray hands were long fingered, and besides the rings he had some sort of small round device on his left wrist, on a jointed metal strap.
“When you kill a man, and consume it,” Balan asked. “Does it bring you joy?”
Joy? Nesha-tari had never thought of it like that. It was necessity. Assuagement. The only thing that dulled the pain of the Hunger, for a while.
“As much as anything ever has,” she said quietly, feeling a sort of disgust with herself. Balan frowned. He shook his head sadly and clucked his tongue.
“All the beauty you could have for the taking. Spoiled by the taint of your father’s monkey blood.”
Nesha-tari ignored his comment. “What is Danavod doing here?”
“I never said she stayed, nor even that she landed,” Balan pointed out.
“I am not going to waste a question asking about that.”
The devil’s grin returned. “Clever, girl. Very well. The Dragon’s pesky little servants alerted her that something is very wrong in this place, or soon could be. She came to see that it is handled, and to give a message.”
“It is already being handled,” Nesha-tari said.
“First hear the message,” Balan said, then intoned formally. “Madame Nesha-tari, servant of the Azure One. Black Danavod, Great Dragon of the Night Sky, sister of your Master, bids you to leave this place. Remove yourself from Vod’Adia, and go on your way in peace.”
Nesha-tari had the sense she had just wasted two questions, but that was not the reason she clenched her teeth as her blue eyes flared.
“Danavod has no authority to give orders to me!”
“I imagine that was why she said ‘bids’ and not ‘tells.’ More like a request, I should say. ‘Would you be so good as to beat feet,’ and all that.”
“I will leave when I am ready,” Nesha-tari said, and Balan bared his teeth.
“Happy to hear it,” he said, and gave a deeper bow before he turned as if to leave.
“Balan, I have more questions,” Nesha-tari said.
“I do not, for the moment,” the devil said without turning around. “You have given me some things to look into, and I may return with more at a later time. For now, there are some other matters to which I must attend. Take care of yourself, daughter of the Lamia.”
With that, Balan stepped around a column, and was gone.
*
Balan reappeared some miles distant, stepping out from around a corner in a long hallway leading to an open courtyard, deep within the palace at the heart of Vod’Adia. The hall was free of dust and gorgeously carpeted in long burgundy rolls with golden frills, and the walls were hung with rich tapestries, canvas paintings, and small statuary on shelves. The devil lord looked around at none of it, and his face was pensive.
“Poltus,” he said, then stopped walking as nothing had happened. Balan sighed.
“Poltus, Poltus, Poltus.”
A little devil about a foot tall winked into being, ochre-colored skin tight around its bones, naked and sexless. Sharp spikes ran down its spine to the tip of its tail, as long again as was its body. Its posture was bent as though it had been working at a very small desk, and it had a quill in one hand. As it started to drop toward the floor the little devil unfurled leathery wings like a bats, and though they did not beat the air it hovered up to the height of Balan’s shoulder.
“Busy?” Balan asked.
“Forgiveness, my Lord,” the creature said. It had a wizened face with a long nose and two small horns. “There is much to be recorded, and most of your minions are in the field.”
Balan resumed walking, and Poltus bobbed along at his side.
“I need some research done,” Balan said. “From the old monkey books.”
“Humans, my Lord.”
Balan stopped again.
“What?”
“Humans, Lord. Monkeys are their genetic predecessors. The humans are the ones who can talk. And make books.”
Balan glared. “Do you know from whence I hail, Poltus? Originally?”
The little devil thought for a moment.
“I do, Lord Balan.”
“Then don’t you think I know the difference between a monkey and a human? I had two years of college, for crying out loud.”
“Yes, Lord,” Poltus nodded. “At what is called a ‘community’ college, if I am not mistaken.”
Balan raised a hand and pointed a finger in Poltus‘s face, but the little devil did not flinch. They had been going back and forth like this for centuries.
“You see, Poltus, it is that kind of smart-ass comment that makes you so popular with the other Spiny Devils. This is why no one wants to have a beer with you after work.”
“Yes, my Lord Balan.”
“Yes-my-Lord-Balan,” Balan mimicked Poltus’s exact voice, only making it more whiny.
“Go to the human books, you little dingbat, and find me all that is known of something called a Lamia.”
A scrap of parchment appeared in Poltus’s free hand and it scribbled with its quill.
“Is that a proper name, Lord?”
“Species. Native to this world, I am guessing.”
Balan sighed and looked down the hall to the courtyard. His guest was waiting, and though it was probably best that she was not left to her own devices, Balan’s regular duties during the time of the Opening should not be neglected.
“Is there anything of which I should be aware?”
“No my Lord,” Poltus said.
“What about that hard-core bunch of monkeys from south of here? The musketeers and mystics from Kwo?”
“They killed another sixteen demons, mostly Rutterkin and Dretch, though they did drop one Glabrezu. We have however allowed them to recover a bracelet of quite extraordinary value, and they have begun murdering each other for possession of it.”
Balan smiled in spite of himself.
“Nice.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“That is all?”
“All that you should be aware of,
yes.”
Balan frowned. “There is something of which I should not be aware?”
Poltus looked uncomfortable, and Balan raised a hand.
“Never mind, don’t tell me.” He turned and took several more sparking steps before stopping a third time with a sigh.
“Just tell me this. Does what I should not know involve someone named Uella?”
“It does, my Lord.”
“Don’t tell me,” Balan repeated as he strode swiftly on, cursing the impatience of succubi in general, and one in particular, under his breath. That was what he got for using demons for devils’ work.
Before he reached the end of the hall Balan could hear an angry buzzing from the courtyard beyond. He rolled his red eyes as he stepped out to where his guest was waiting, and keeping herself amused.
The Great Black Wyrm of the Night Sky filled half the wide yard with her serpentine bulk, enormous leathery wings folded back along her body and her long tail lying casually along two walls. The tail was in Balan’s way as he passed through the door and he absently reached up to grab a bony quill as long as a sword blade. He yanked himself over the obstruction, dropping to a smooth landing on the flagstones and shooting up a spark from his hoof.
Far up ahead, the Great Dragon turned her magnificent head on its long neck and looked back down her own length at Balan, raising one stony ridge of scales like an eyebrow. The buzzing noise came from further along, where Balan now saw the Dragon had rooted a Chasme up from somewhere. The demon was a particularly ugly thing, built mostly like an insect with huge, multi-faceted eyes like a housefly’s set above a hooked nose and an oversized humanoid mouth, from which the angry buzzing emerged. It had six limbs, the lower pair bug-like legs, but the other four were brawny arms ending in clawed hands. It stood about eight-feet tall at the shoulder. Danavod had plucked off its wings and was batting it around the courtyard like a cat torturing a mouse.
“Did you just clamber over my tail, Balan?” the Dragon asked. Though her fearsome jaws did not move, Balan heard her voice as richly sonorous, with the consistency of honey. Her face, and whole vast body for that matter, were pitch black. Yet her eyes seemed darker still. They were set further forward on her head than a true reptile’s, and the scaly ridges sweeping back from her snout flared over the first joint of her long neck like a mane of bony armor, giving her whole face a vaguely leonine appearance. A single horn crowned her head and a large barb jutted forward like a leveled lance from either side of her sword-filled mouth. Balan had seen many beings of great power in worlds beyond this one, but nowhere had he seen anything to equal the sheer physical presence of a Great Dragon.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” Balan bowed deeply. “I did not realize the area was sensitive.”
“A lady is always sensitive about her hindquarters,” Danavod said with a sniff. A puff of poison smoke emerged from her nostril.
The Chasme demon had noticed its tormentor’s distraction, and with a hornet buzz it charged, scuttling out from between Danavod’s front claws and racing across the courtyard at her body. Wing-stumps twitched and loathsome digestive juices burbled from its mouth. Where the drops spattered the ground they pitted the flagstones with smoking holes.
Before Balan could offer a polite warning the Dragon moved, and if at rest her appearance was magnificent, in motion she was as a force of nature.
Danavod got effortlessly to her feet, her whole vast body moving, impossibly, with the speed of a small darting animal. She rose and blotted out the sky as she shifted, allowing the charging Chasme to rush under her. Supporting part of her weight on her tail, Danavod swept a hind leg beneath her and impaled the demon on five claws each longer than a giant’s sword, like a soft piece of fruit on the tines of a fork. The acidic fluids within the Chasme spewed from its wounds and made the stone ground smoke, but they spattered off the Dragon’s claws leaving no more mark than would a summer rain.
Danavod pivoted in the courtyard, giving the impression that the whole world was spinning out of control. Her tail scraped along the walls with a sound like a wagon train rolling down a mountainside. She settled on her haunches, stretched her neck to look high over the courtyard wall, and with an indifferent flick of her hind leg sent the Chasme’s body tumbling through the sky to crash down on Vod’Adia’s streets blocks away from the palace. Danavod settled down, cleaned her claws by shredding flagstones like tissue paper, and from a great height turned her head to look steeply down at Balan. Her movement had kicked up a swirling wind in the courtyard, and she waited for it to subside before speaking.
“Have you found the Wizard and the book?”
“I have not,” Balan said truthfully. It was not possible for any devil to tell a lie. Not a literal one, anyway.
“And your servants?”
“I have no word of such a discovery from them, your Immensity.”
Danavod lowered her great maw, stopping close enough above Balan that he could feel the inferno heat deep within her, oozing out of her noxious snout and from between her shark-tooth fangs.
“I do not again need to explain the importance of this task, do I?”
“Not at all, your Enormity. The Wizard of the Circle must in no way come near to the nodal port, lest he work some magic that might undo what the Witch King Kanderamath did here long ago. I assure you, your Greatness, such a thing is quite impossible without my knowledge.”
Something rumbled deep within the Dragon’s belly.
“Divest yourself of any diabolic scheming, Balan. You will recall that I know ways to kill you that will destroy you utterly, not merely banish you back to your own domains.”
“How could I forget, your Hugeness?”
Noxious tendrils of thick smoke, green in hue, drifted up from Danavod’s nostrils.
“What of the servant of my brother of the Blue Sky?”
“Found her, your Tremendousness. I personally gave her your message, explaining that her presence here is unnecessary, and bade her leave in peace.”
“So she has gone?”
“She has not gone,” Balan said. “Her party is a couple days deep into the city already. It is a long walk back to the gate.”
That was literally true, as was the fact Nesha-tari had told Balan she would leave only when she was ready. But Danavod had not asked Balan directly what was said.
Danavod gave a dismissive toss of her great head, and with another flurry of bows Balan left the courtyard by another long hall. He stepped well along it before allowing himself a broad smile.
The Great Dragon was afraid, and the fear of such a powerful being was intoxicating to the Devil Lord. The cyclical Openings of the Sable City had proven to be a great boon to the coffers of Danavod’s Shugak, and thus to her own hoard. Her agreement with Balan and his ilk had been of benefit to both sides, but it was ultimately of more value to the Dragon. There were plenty of ways for the devils to stake claims on the souls of those departing this world, and from many other worlds beyond this one. There were always more worlds, though there remained but one Hell.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The party slew more than a dozen demons in the tower before they reached the top and found a trapdoor out to the flat roof. Actually, Shikashe and Deskata had done most of the slaying, while Tilda, Zeb, and Heggenauer handled the leftovers.
Tilda herself had picked off two, one clawed thing with a beak on the third floor, then on the fifth her arrows had found the heart of a four-legged, dog-like creature with a disturbingly human head, though it had barked plenty. The party cleared each floor before ascending to the next and while the others were busy Tilda had managed to slip a jeweled collar off one of the slain creatures and secret it in a pouch. She was not quite sure why she had done so, but for a moment some Miilarkian part of her had taken over. She had determined that whatever else happened, she should at least give herself some chance to profit monetarily from this whole awful mess.
Since the fight with the bearded devils the day before, Tilda had f
elt a coldness growing in her stomach as gray and cloudy as the sky above the Sable City. Before that encounter she had told herself that the legionnaires who had abducted Claudja had a good chance of staying alive in Vod’Adia, so long as they stayed on the streets during daylight hours and found safe havens at night. But the attack in the open had given the lie to Tilda’s hopes. While her own party had dispatched the half-dozen devils without much trouble, they had a samurai with fearsome magic swords, a Dragon Cultist throwing lightning, and a Jobian cleric to bless weapons so that they told against the beasts. Claudja was the prisoner of three legionnaires with no magic, and a Wizard who Zeb had insisted was not a bad fellow, but who was also far from an archmage.
Claudja’s odds were that of a misag uyak as they called it at the Island Stakes in Miilark. The Fool’s Bet. The Duchess was almost certainly dead already.
Tilda was aware that the likelihood of Claudja’s demise should not have weighed on her nearly as much as it did. She had only known the Duchess for a matter of weeks, and though they had talked at length over the long days on the bullywug Gorpal’s slow-moving raft, they were really little more than acquaintances. Furthermore, Tilda had plenty of reason to believe that the determined little Duchess had paid Gorpal’s crew to cut the throats of six Daulmen while they slept. An efficient decision, but hardly endearing.
Yet Tilda had chosen to come into this dark city in order to help the Duchess if she could, and when Brother Heggenauer had asked her why she had said it was because Claudja was a friend. She had meant it too, but now Tilda had the feeling that she should not have trusted her own judgment. She had entered the city because it was her own choice to make, not John Deskata’s, not Captain Block’s, not the great House back in Miilark. The reason the Captain had brought Tilda to this continent was surely moot unless John pulled off a miracle and somehow used the Wizard, probably dead by now as well, and a book, probably lost, to send him magically back to the Islands. Tilda had not entered Vod’Adia for that slim chance. She had made a choice to do something of her own choosing, rather than doing what was expected of her. It was the second time in her life she had done such a thing. The first had been when she left her father’s shop on Chrysanthemum Quay, and applied for entry into the Deskata Guild.
The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) Page 44
