“And the rest of it?”
Poltus sighed. “It appears to be a sort of commentary on a far older scroll, fragments of which are preserved within Kanderamath’s text. This original is written in an ancient form of Kantan, which I can read, though understanding the fragments is a different matter. They are a chaotic hodge-podge of existential theorizing and tribal superstitions concerning the Three Nodes, including the one located here, and their relation to the magic of this world.”
Uella had curled up on the bed, shaking out her wings to cover her like blankets. She started snoring very loudly.
“This stuff is important, dear,” Balan said at her.
“Hmm. Old books. Fascinating.”
Balan turned away from her with a look of resignation.
“The Node,” he said to Poltus. “That’s the big archway in the center tower that doesn’t do anything?”
“Yes, Lord. Though I imagine it did do something at one time. Probably about the same period during which the Kantan scroll was written.”
Balan narrowed his red eyes, and his diabolic brain sifted through what he knew. The Great Dragon Danavod was afraid of what a Circle Wizard could do with this book, for if the Sable City of Vod’Adia was again severed from this world she stood to lose an enormous source of wealth. Wealth was the measure by which the Great Dragons kept score among themselves. Devils kept score in different ways. Vod’Adia was a convenient place for them to gather souls, but hardly a necessary one.
“The Circle Wizard,” Balan said. “He can read the entire book, correct?”
Poltus did not look wholly confident. “Perhaps. We scrutinized the man’s mind while he was unconscious and without defense, and found him to be of only modest ability, at the most. He is certainly no Kanderamath.”
“That does not mean that he could not undo what the Witch King wrought here.”
Uella rolled back over, propping herself up on wings and elbows.
“You‘re going to cut this city off from its world?” she asked with a small frown. “Why? Don’t you and the Black Dragon have a deal?”
“More than a deal, we have signed a contract with Danavod.” Balan grinned widely, revealing his own fangs. “And that always works out so well for the other party.”
Uella grinned back at him. “You’re so damned sexy when you’re evil. Just for the hell of it.”
Poltus cleared its little throat. “Pardon me, my Lord, but the contract does present certain obstacles to you, or to any of our kind, taking direct action.”
Balan looked sideways at the little devil.
“You know, a good number two would have figured out a way around that by now.”
Poltus permitted itself to look lofty.
“Yes indeed, Lord. So would an evil one.”
*
The party gathered on the third floor and watched the lights of the Shugak hobgoblins for an hour. There seemed to be about a hundred of the creatures and they built a cluster of campfires flush against the westernmost tower of the nine ringing the palace complex, reflecting dancing flames off the smooth black walls. They were clearly settling in for the night, if not longer.
Nesha-tari could see them better than the others with her Dragon-touched eyes, and after her earlier talk with the devil Lord Balan she also had a better idea of what their presence might mean. After a good deal of talk amongst the party Zebulon asked for her thoughts, and Nesha-tari told him.
“Either the devils are going to allow the Shugak to wait here for Phinneas and the others, or they have already captured them and are going to turn them over.”
Zeb told the others, Heggenauer asked a question, and Zeb asked her.
“The Shugak and the devils of Vod’Adia are cooperating?”
“Yes. The devils have some sort of relationship with the Shugak’s mistress.”
“How do you know that?” Zeb asked on his own.
“Their leader told me. I spoke with the Devil Lord while the rest of you were up in the tower.”
Zeb stared at her in the flickering light.
“Do you want me to tell everybody that?”
Nesha-tari growled. “I do not care, Zebulon. This matter is at an end, or close enough to it that these details are of no consequence. Come, we will speak with the hobgoblins.”
“We will do what now?”
Nesha-tari turned away from the window and walked to where the unlit lantern had been left by the door, as the others were still concerned that no light should show from the house. She picked it up and reached inside to pinch the wick between a finger and thumb, and lit it with a sparking snap and a whiff of ozone.
The rest of the party made various noises of alarm, and Nesha-tari sighed and rolled her eyes. She’d had just about enough of humans, devils, bullywugs, hobgoblins, and at the moment, even Dragons. Danavod was running a slipshod operation in Vod’Adia, and Nesha-tari presently had no more interest in the whole sorry mess of it all. So long as the Duchess of Chengdea did not end up where Horayachus had wanted her to go, Akroya’s purpose in sending Nesha-tari here should certainly be fulfilled. To hell with the rest of it.
“All of you shut up,” she snapped, and the party did so without Zeb having to translate. She glared around at each of them.
“This is over. Coming into the city was pointless. We will see to the denouement, but our involvement here is through.”
Zeb started to say so to the others, and they of course started asking more questions before he had gotten very far. Nesha-tari growled again and turned to go, ready to leave the squabbling idiots in the dark, but she stopped as someone gave a sharp whistle.
It was Amatesu, standing with one hand raised for silence and her head tilted to the side. She said something, Nesha-tari did not know what, but then everyone heard a set of steady knocks, coming from outside. It sounded like someone rapping a hand on the front door downstairs.
The party rushed to the windows and Nesha-tari looked down from one next to Zebulon. They stared down into darkness until Nesha-tari extended the lantern outside, and the flickering light shined down on the gray, upturned face of the Devil Lord, Balan.
“Hello again, itinerant adventurers,” the devil called up to them. “Anyone up for a parley? We‘ve an awful lot to talk about.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After the little devils had snatched Claudja’s clothes and stranded her in the tub, the Duchess had fashioned a sort of poncho from bed sheets. She was sitting huddled in them on the bed an hour later when there was another knock on the door, but Claudja had decided she was through with crouching behind the tub and brandishing a silver butter knife.
“What?” she called irritably, and the door opened. A little devil flew in and returned her clothes in a neatly folded pile, washed, mended, and still warm as though they had been dried before a fire. Claudja redressed and went on plotting her escape, though she had not gotten very far in that direction all day.
The room’s single window gave a view of packed dirt and the side of a long building made of black stone, standing five stories tall and with rows and rows of arched windows covered by shutters. Claudja could lean out her window far enough to see that her room was in the top story of an identical building, laid out at an angle to the first rather than in parallel. The two wings came together at a central tower to her right, while out at their far ends to the left both ended at towers extending another three or four stories up into the gray sky. A slice of Vod’Adia’s monochromatic streets was visible beyond the towers, past the surrounding area of bare dirt and sifting gray dust.
The window was wide enough to jump through, but the fall was certainly enough to kill her. Claudja had enough sheets and towels to knot together a rope that might get her halfway down. A fall from there would probably break both her legs, but might leave her alive. For a while. Claudja made that her backup plan.
She thought she could brain a little devil with a chair the next time one hovered in, but that would only be of use if a dozen of them did not e
nter together. She also knew from the glimpse of a voluminous white sleeve in the hallway the first time her door had been opened that there was a bigger devil out there, probably the same sort of bearded creature that had carried her to this place. Claudja tried to listen for it through the slight crack under her door, but heard nothing in the hall, not even breathing. The thought that devils might not have to breath gave her a chill.
Claudja still had no good ideas by the time the sky grew dark outside, the mist-dulled shadows from behind her building letting her know that she was facing east. Dinner was brought to her, the same as lunch, and Claudja ate again without drinking the wine this time.
Though she was exhausted Claudja stayed off the bed and sat in a chair in the corner, after deciding not to bother wedging it under the doorknob. She sat with her arms crossed, biting her lip, mind running down intricate scenarios that had yet to lead anywhere good. Her eyes grew progressively heavier, and each time she started to nod-off the light from the hanging glow stones started to fail. At one point when they had gone almost completely to darkness, the door banged open with a crash.
Claudja jerked in her chair as a tall figure breezed into the room. Claudja recognized her as the creature who had killed the legionnaires, though she had replaced her tight black leathers with a long gown flowing to the floor, colored a deep burgundy and moving like silk. Her green and blonde hair was pinned up and neatly arranged to frame her face which was pale as alabaster, or a corpse. Her red eyes, fangs, and folded bat wings topped with hooks made her rather hard to mistake for a human woman.
“Hi there,” the creature grinned at Claudja. “We were not introduced. You may call me Uella.”
It was the first time all day a devil had spoken to Claudja. She got to her feet with her hands in fists at her sides, which Uella seemed to find funny.
“Where is Phinneas?” Claudja demanded in the most regal tone she could summon.
Uella beckoned with a finger, the nail a dark red that matched her dress.
“Come this way, and I will show you.”
“I am not going anywhere with you, Devil Woman,” Claudja said. Uella frowned.
“First off, I am a demon, not a devil. No tail, as you can see. Second…what do I call you?”
Claudja was not about to go on casual terms with a demon.
“I am the Duchess of Chengdea.”
“Good for you. Second, Duchess, you absolutely are coming with me. But I leave it to you if you wish to walk, or would prefer being bound and dragged.”
Claudja’s heart was racing and the palms of her clenched hands were clammy.
“Shall I get a rope?” Uella grinned, but Claudja stepped away from the wall. The demoness gave a disappointed cluck and a shrug, then turned to lead the way out into the hall, turning to the right. Her gown was open in the back from neck to her slim waist, allowing her wings plenty of room.
There was indeed a bearded devil in the hall, standing just to the left of the door and holding a pole arm with a cluster of sharp blades and twisting hooks at the top. Claudja shied away from the creature and followed Uella, who was skipping away down a wide passage lined with doors on both sides, illuminated by candles in ornate candelabras. The demoness was whistling an unfamiliar tune. Claudja looked back over her shoulder and saw that the bearded devil was following them, albeit it at a polite distance behind.
Uella skipped along gaily for quite a while before halting before another door where a bearded devil stood guard, and Claudja hurried forward hopefully. As she arrived the demoness pulled open the door and Claudja looked into a room very much like her own. Phinneas Phoarty was just sitting up in the bed, where he had been lying atop the covers. His face looked freshly scrubbed though his eyes were sunken and exhausted, and his gray wizard robes were clean. They actually looked like they had been pressed.
Claudja and Phin shouted each others names, but Uella slammed the door and shot the bolt.
“Everyone brushed and watered, as you can see,” the demoness beamed.
The door shook as Phin put a shoulder against it and he continued to shout, asking Claudja if she was all right.
“I’m fine,” she said back through the door, though she had no idea if she was or not.
Phin hammered with his hands, echoing loudly in the long hall. Uella frowned.
“Phin, calm down,” Claudja called, but he was still shouting rather than listening. A deep snarl rumbled from Uella’s throat and she bawled, “THAT’S ENOUGH, MAGGOT!” in a booming voice.
Phin’s room must have had a similar table and chair situation as Claudja’s, for it sounded as though the Wizard reeled back into them, knocking furniture to the floor and falling himself with a grunt.
“Ahem,” Uella said. “This way now, Duchess.”
The demoness pranced on, whistling again, and Claudja took a last look at Phin’s door before following. One bearded devil still followed her, while the second remained at its post.
The hall ended at an open doorway beyond which a wide staircase with multiple landings descended along the outer wall of an open square shaft. Everything was of stone, presumably the same black material as the rest of Vod’Adia, but here all was painted in a soft brown tone that looked warm in the flickering light of more candles. The stairs were carpeted and the stone banisters were intricately carved with whirling designs. Claudja could see down the middle of the shaft all five stories to the ground, to a floor that looked like white marble.
Uella led the way down by the expedient of hiking her gown up over her boots and sliding sidesaddle down each banister, crying “ Weeeee !” every time, and waiting giggling at each landing for Claudja to walk down the steps behind her. Claudja started to wonder if insanity was typical to all demons, or if Uella was peculiar even for her kind.
The landing of the second floor had no wall on the outside of the shaft, leaving a balcony with a banister across the open space. Uella sat on the banister, swinging her feet over the side, and Claudja gasped as she looked out past the demon‘s furled wings. They had reached the outward end of the long gallery, and Claudja saw with some surprise that the adjoining tower was hollow within, just an enormous space like the interior of a silo with windowless black walls and a floor of naked white stone. Several torches burned on stands down on the floor beyond the banister, and their light did not reach all the way up the round walls to the ceiling high above. It did illuminate a great pair of doors at ground level, across from the balcony where Claudja stood and Uella sat. Even as the Duchess looked at them, the two wooden portals were swinging open.
“Such timing,” Uella said happily.
The doors swung wide and a single figure stepped into the torchlight from the night beyond, a male devil with a tail and a single hoof that struck up a spark each time it touched the floor. It walked in past the torches, turned around and gave a deep bow, moving its arms in a sharp gray jacket as though bidding others to enter. Two more figures did so slowly, creeping into the cavernous space and looking all around. On the left was a man in ragged armor carrying a crossbow pointed at the floor, and on the right with a short bow at a half-pull, familiar in her triangular half-cloak now coated a dusty gray, was Matilda Lanai.
*
The party had all understood the devil Balan’s voice as he promised them safe passage, and vowed that neither he nor his minions would do them any harm. Tilda did not believe the creature for a moment, and when Zeb relayed Nesha-tari’s assurances that the devil must adhere to the letter of all promises it made, she did not believe the Zant sorceress either.
Nesha-tari was determined to go to the palace with the creature, and the Westerners would of course go with her. John Deskata said nothing, but plainly meant to go along as well. After exchanging several skeptical glances, Tilda, Zeb, and Brother Heggenauer joined the others rather than remain behind in the house.
The party lit torches and followed Balan’s sparking hoof across the open ground around the palace, crossing an arching footbridge over a d
ry ditch along the way. As they approached the tall doors to the northernmost of the nine towers ringing the place, everyone but Nesha-tari readied their weapons. Tilda and Zeb moved to the front with their bows.
The doors opened just as Balan approached them and the devil walked through to stand in the middle of a large open area, turning and beckoning to the party. Tilda glanced at Zeb, who met her eyes.
“If this goes horribly wrong, will you do me a favor?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Shoot me first. Plumb in the head.”
A single bark of laughter that sounded slightly hysterical snuck out of Tilda’s mouth before she pressed her lips together tightly.
She and Zeb crept in, scanning the vast space all around which was mostly lost in shadows that reeked of ambush. Balan waited for them with a wide smile, and when they neared the edge of illumination from the torches on iron stands set around him, someone shouted Tilda’s name from across the room.
Tilda drew her bow fully and sighted down the shaft on Balan’s forehead, as he was still the only target she could see. From the easy way the devil smiled back at Tilda she was sure a non-magical arrow would bounce off his head without leaving a scratch. Running footsteps against stone sounded from across the tower and behind the devil for the entire structure was hollow inside, and suddenly the Duchess Claudja Perforce of Chengdea was running past the torches, looking fresher and cleaner than she had any right to, and with her gray eyes open wide.
Tilda could not bring herself to turn her bow on the Duchess, but Claudja must have seen the look of alarm in her eyes. The Duchess slid to a halt on the smooth flagstones while she was still several strides away.
“Is this a trick?” Tilda barked. Claudja stared at her.
“If it was, would I say so?”
“Duchess Perforce,” Heggenauer said, his shield clanging against the back of his breastplate as he hurried forward, carrying a torch along with his mace.
“Brother Heggenauer?” Claudja’s stunned eyes snapped between Tilda and the priest. “What are the two of you doing here?”
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