God's Demon

by Wayne Barlowe

  She turned back to Ardat Lili. The slim handmaiden had done her best to clean the ash. Lilith smiled as she watched her leave the room.

  Lilith sat down and began carving the half-finished piece. With clever fingers wielding a variety of tools, she peeled away the harder striations of bone, refining the likeness, smoothing and then polishing the gleaming surface. When the little idol was done she put the tools aside and sat back for a moment turning it in her hand. She never varied the poses from one piece to the next but kept them iconic, like altarpieces. She put it down and closed her eyes, and as she did a tiny fiery sigil appeared—the secret sigil that she had devised for herself, for, not being a demon, she had not received one when she Fell. It lingered for a moment and then she willed it onto the sculpture’s surface, where it sank slowly within. It was her signature, but more than that, it was her message.

  Lilith opened her red eyes, satisfied, as she looked at the piece. “My message,” she said in a barely audible whisper. “Will you ever find the right soul?”

  She stood and brushed the white dust from her thighs. Then she picked up the finished idol and, walking to the now-slashed bedcovers, tucked it deep beneath them.

  Chapter Five

  ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

  Eligor wandered into the palace Library exhausted. He removed his heavy cloak and piled into a huge chair that already had a comforting clutter of books surrounding it. Now that the palace’s construction was complete, life had settled down to a routine that Eligor found to be demanding and predictable. As Captain of the Flying Guard, he found himself ceaselessly occupied reviewing the various weak points of Adamantinarx. Outside threats, mostly in the form of spies, were an unending problem.

  His thoughts, though, were never far from the palace Library. Here, in the company of his friends—the countless ancient tomes that had been written and collected over the ages—he could try to understand the world that he had left and the newer world to which he now belonged. Many of the volumes were reference works, books that contained elaborate formulas for arcane spells or incantations. Much had been lost by the demons’ separation from their angelic counterparts, and these books were often sad attempts at reconstructing the elusive, vaguely remembered rituals.

  Here, too, were the innumerable Books of Gamigin, the Books of the Dead Souls. Stretching for bookcase after dusty bookcase, these incredible books, many of which were yet to be cataloged, compiled an accounting of every soul who had ever descended to Hell and his or her sins. And more fantastically, every soul who ever would arrive, a concept that even Eligor had trouble wrestling with. Reading even one of those immense books was tiresome work. The books of the souls were interesting, but the books that Eligor found most engrossing were the memoirs, written shortly after the Fall by so many demons trying, as best they could, to come to grips with what had befallen them.

  All of the books, their vellum pages made of souls, were capable of mindlessly reciting their contents in their many droning voices but had been prudently silenced by a glyph from the Librarian, an equally quiet demon named Eintsaras. When he was alone, Eligor found ways of countering the glyph and would sit, listening to some ancient soul quietly recounting a life lived long ago. Eligor suspected that Eintsaras knew his secret, but the two never brought the issue up.

  Eligor enjoyed all of his time in the Library, but he truly enjoyed the moments, as today, when he would encounter his lord buried behind a stack of enormous volumes, slowly turning the thick gray pages and poring over some forgotten passage. He kept his powers sharp and Eligor watched him occasionally scribing an old glyph in the air repeatedly, incorporating its essence into himself.

  Eligor picked up the nearest book and began to read, taking notes as he did, but it was not long before the low and measured intonations of his master’s voice distracted him. The Demon Major was focused and Eligor studied him, trying to view him objectively. Eligor was so used to the towering demon that it seemed he never pulled back to actually look at him.

  In the uneven light of the candles Sargatanas was an imposing figure, dark and potent, with thin coils of steam rising from him. After the Fall, many demons had faces that seemed in keeping with their true being—tortured, prideful, and violent. Sargatanas was not among them. His massive head was deeply sculpted, bony, and strangely handsome. Even without its nose, the long face in repose still bore much of what had made it angelic, noble. Floating a few inches above his head were the three small horns of his rank. These, Eligor knew, could be withdrawn for protection and were considered a great prize if taken in combat. Over the eons Sargatanas had filled a small cabinet with those of his enemies.

  He was clothed in his ruddy flesh-robes, his customary raiments when he went about the palace. The glare from his fiery pectoral sigils highlighted the prominent veins and creases of the thick garments that crossed his upper torso and flowed into the wide cloak that trailed him. Beneath them the fused rib-carapace bore a hole, ragged and sharp edged, where the demon’s huge heart had once been. A slowly pulsing glow, not unlike that of a cooling furnace, illuminated the terrible wound, and like the persistent flames that played upon his head, this inner fire, like that of all Demons Major, was slave to Sargatanas’ temperament, gathering in brilliance when he was angry. Such was not the case, now, as Eligor studied him. The studious Lord of Adamantinarx, book splayed before him, was at ease.

  This was the Sargatanas that Eligor was most accustomed to. But he had seen that other side of his lord, the fierce, turbulent personality that none in Adamantinarx, and only a relatively small number in all of Hell, could withstand. His fury could be immeasurable, and the changes it wrought on him physically were astounding. Eligor remembered sudden, organic metamorphoses that rendered his lord utterly unrecognizable. The more agitated he became, the more rapid were the shifts. Such was the fearsome power of a Demon Major. They were changes that a Demon Minor could not fully comprehend, and, to be sure, Eligor himself sometimes found them frightening.

  “If you like, I will stand up so that you can get a better view,” Sargatanas said, looking up, a twinkle in his silvered eyes. He rose up from his seat, enormous. “But I will turn away so that you can continue staring surreptitiously.”

  Eligor laughed. “I am sorry, Lord. I was trying to look at you as if I had never met you before. I wondered what Faraii and all the others must have thought upon meeting you.”

  “Why, they are supposed to be completely awed, Eligor,” he said, a hint of mockery in his tone. “I am not so different than any other Demon Major, am I? Surely you have better things to do than to sit about in such ‘deep’ thought. How is the northern border these days?”

  “Secure as always. To be truthful, Lord, I was also trying to remember you as you were. I only saw you in the Above a few times, and those were from afar.”

  “That is strange, Eligor. I was trying to remember that, myself, a while back. I almost could. Much time has passed.” Sargatanas sat back down. An unidentifiable expression clouded his features.

  Eligor closed his book. He could see some deep emotion working at his lord.

  “Tell me, my lord, if you would. What was he like?” Eligor asked. “I was just a lance-wing in the War. I never met him. And you were so… close to him.”

  “Him. Him I can remember. After all this time. I can see him just as he was. Lucifer,” said Sargatanas. “I have not said his name aloud in millennia.” The Demon Major paused, looking up toward the vaulted ceiling. “He was the best of us, Eligor. Something truly special among us. He shone with… with a ferocity that made us pale by comparison.”

  “Everyone I have spoken with, or read, says the same of him,” said Eligor.

  “He was beloved by the Throne and he knew it. But that was not enough,” Sargatanas said as if he had not heard Eligor. “He was not content. There was something that he had to fulfill. He called it… his restless vision.”

  Eligor looked quizzically at Sargatanas.

  “He could not u
nderstand the purpose behind the creation of humanity. They seemed, he said, like a new and unthinking child, suddenly thrust into the world and loved just as much as the old. Because of this he felt they were a threat and Lucifer wanted the Throne and all of us to see their potential flaws. Many of us agreed with him. Too many.”

  “Or not enough, depending on one’s point of view,” said Eligor. But his attempt at vague levity fell on deaf ears.

  “Eligor, what we did was wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Of that I am now certain. Lucifer’s truest gift—no, his greatest curse—was his ability to convince us to follow him. Of course, there were far too many of us who needed no excuse to go to War. The rhetoric, the very words were like shards of ice; once plunged into you they melted and flowed deep within, permeating your soul with their coldness. It was impossible not to hear them again and again, even in moments of rest. It seems never to have occurred to us what we might lose if we heeded them. I, for one, was entirely seduced.”

  Sargatanas was silent, his head bowed.

  “My lord, it all made sense at the time.”

  “And now?” Sargatanas’ voice was a husky whisper. Embers floated languorously from his head.

  Eligor shrugged.

  “Now we must try to be what we are, not what we were,” said Sargatanas. “That, at least, is the theory.”

  “And what of humanity?”

  Sargatanas slowly shook his head.

  “Look around us—look at them, at what ‘knowledge’ has granted them. They are the saddest casualty of our War. They have become everything Lucifer might have hoped for. A triumph of disappointment to those Above.”

  Eintsaras walked to their table and, with a curious look upon his face, placed an old, heavy book atop the stack before Sargatanas. A small cloud of its dust puffed up and dissipated after a moment.

  Eligor nodded. It was true; whether he had been prophetic or hopeful, Lucifer’s world had come to pass. Could he have dreamt that it would have failed so spectacularly?

  Eligor picked up the sheet of vellum he had been taking notes on. It twitched in his hand.

  “‘He Fell, and it was like the stars torn down… the entire sky was afire with his descent,’” read Eligor. “‘I saw him, like a bolt of lightning, streak down toward Hell…,’ and, ‘Lord Lucifer Fell, slow and deliberately, a trail of fire behind him…’” He put the page down and looked directly at Sargatanas. “Which of these is true? They cannot all be.”

  “I do not know,” said Sargatanas, shaking his head. “My feeling is that there is probably some truth to all of them. Perhaps at various points in his descent it appeared differently. We all saw things when we Fell. The agony did things to all of us.”

  “Where do you think he is, my lord? In hiding—ashamed? Or waiting? Or when he Fell, was he destroyed outright for his efforts?”

  “I could not begin to say. Our very first Council of Majors addressed that question. I, like all the others of my rank, sent out countless parties to search for him. Some never returned. We found nothing. Not even a hint of where he might have Fallen.”

  Eligor picked up a carved jet book-weight and rotated it, considering what he had just heard. It still seemed impossible to him that Lucifer had simply vanished.

  Sargatanas stood, straightening the heavy folds of his robes. The charred seraphic wing-stumps that floated behind his shoulder blades flexed and relaxed. He picked up the book Eintsaras had just laid down and put a hand on his captain’s shoulder.

  “We can manage without him and his gilded words. This is no place for them. Hell rages around us and we have risen to its challenge and, in so doing, we have tempered ourselves against sentimentality. Against nostalgia, against the memories. And that is how it should be, Eligor,” Sargatanas said, standing. “That is how it has to be.”

  Eligor smiled and his chest filled with devotion to his master. He was truly privileged to be in Sargatanas’ company.

  As Sargatanas swept past him, Eligor caught a glimpse of the title of the book his lord was taking back to his rooms. It was an ancient book, as old as any Eligor had ever seen in the Library, and carved into its wrinkled and liver-spotted cover were the words “The Secret and Blessed Recollections of the Above.”

  * * * * *

  Time flowed past in blood and fire, and Eligor watched Adamantinarx-upon-the-Acheron grow into the most enlightened metropolis in Hell. Sargatanas not only encouraged a degree of leniency toward the souls in his keeping that followed the letter of Beelzebub’s law, if not its spirit, but also promoted the growth of the Arts, both Dark and Light, among the demons. Souls with any recollection of craftsmanship were given the chance by patron demons to ornament buildings, tile floors, and sculpt the myriad statuary that dotted the plazas. It was, Eligor thought, a dark renaissance—an echo of what had been lost.

  Adamantinarx blossomed into an Infernal anomaly. The city could never be confused with its counterparts Above, but there was enough of a resonance to lessen the demons’ burden somewhat. The palace, indeed the whole city, was an amazing melange of architecture. Eligor saw not only buildings nearly identical to those of the Above but also wonderful human architecture gleaned, he knew from his research, from the memories and skills of the worker-souls. Huge basilicas flanked pagoda-like towers, which sprouted up from between the souls’ densely packed quarters. All were, with the exception of the palace complex on the central mount, a uniform gray-olive color, which somehow made the odd juxtapositions less jarring.

  Surrounded by the howling wilds of Hell, populated by the countless twisted human penitents, and governed by the most learned of demons, Adamantinarx became the bitter envy of all of Sargatanas’ rivals. They neither understood nor tolerated his goals, and a gnawing resentment began to grow in the provinces around him.

  Sargatanas and his court sensed their growing animosity. Visitors from afar became less frequent and forthcoming, bringing fewer gifts and even less news from abroad. Demons Major, other than true friends of the court, stopped coming altogether, sending in their place minor officials. Eligor saw this as not only insulting to his lord but ominous as well. Why, he wondered, was Adamantinarx not seen as the best model of a city but the worst?

  It was with a sense of urgency that he met with Sargatanas and Valefar, and after very little discussion it was agreed that the borders should be made less porous and that entry into Sargatanas’ wards would only be by special permission. Eligor applied himself happily; it was good to have a specific and important task at hand. And to his delight, he was invited to participate in the conjuring sessions with which Sargatanas bolstered the borders. Acting as second to his lord, Eligor watched with profound admiration as a variety of complicated guardian-glyphs, abstract and beautiful, were created, only to speed off by the hundreds to the farthest corners of Sargatanas’ wards. There, Eligor knew, they would take up position, hovering and expanding to hundreds of feet in height, fiery warning-beacons in the ashy gloom.

  Even with such insurances the wards were not entirely safe from spies. They could take nearly any form that a Demon Major could imagine, and Eligor always brought the more baroque infiltrators before Sargatanas or Valefar to show them their enemies’ ingenuity. All manner of walking, crawling, tunneling, and flying creatures were interrogated, examined, cataloged, and then summarily destroyed. They were much too dangerous to keep imprisoned.

  The Great Lord Astaroth, in particular, began a persistent campaign of espionage and theft, flooding the fringes of Sargatanas’ wards with innumerable stealthy flyers.

  “His capital and wards are a shambles,” said Valefar in his chambers late one day. Quartz-paned cases filled with odd curios lined his rooms, reflecting the dim light of Algol, which was sinking behind the horizon. “I cannot understand how one so venerable could have let this happen. Who are his advisors?”

  “Deceitful puppets standing firmly with Beelzebub,” Sargatanas said. “I do not believe that the Fly ever really wanted him as a vassal. He has never had much use
for Astaroth and regards him more as an antiquated curiosity than as a noble ally. His interest in Astaroth has always been nominal.”

  “We could always lend him support, my lord…,” said Eligor.

  “We have been, unbeknownst to the Prince, for the last two millennia,” interrupted Valefar. “But we cannot support his wards as well as our own. We are going to have to cut him off and he knows it. Times to come will not be easy for him.”

  I see.

  Valefar looked at Sargatanas, who sat, fingers steepled, and said evenly, “It might also create problems for us.”

  Sargatanas rose and crossed the room to the large leaded-obsidian windows. He unlatched one and gazed out toward Astaroth’s ward. The wind was strong at this height; heavy parchments on Valefar’s desk began to stir.

  “You, old proctor, are going to cause me a great deal of trouble,” Sargatanas said quietly, staring out into the distant clouds. A roiling storm was punishing the Wastes; red lightning scratched at the horizon. And then, resignedly, Sargatanas said, “Valefar, we must go to Dis. To discuss this in person with the Fly. It is too important to delegate to a messenger. We will leave Adamantinarx in the capable hands of Zoray. Along the way we can hunt a bit and bring some great trophy to the Prince as a token of our enormous high esteem. And you will come as well, Eligor. It has been too long since you were in the capital.”

  “I am sure you missed it, eh?” smirked Valefar.

  Eligor’s wide eyes rolled.