“I have seen enough of the Above.”
“Surely you have also seen enough of Hell.”
Faraii turned slowly to Eligor; his face, limned in faint, pulsing fire, was cast in deep shadow. Only the mask of tiny lights defined it. His metallic eyes glittered and Eligor, for just a moment, saw something in them just beneath the surface, something repressed. He felt an inexplicable sense of menace.
“More than you can imagine.” A tiny spark flew from Faraii’s nostril. The Baron closed his eyes and said, “I am sorry, my friend. I am tired and I would be lying to you if I said that I did not have doubts. I do, but I am also confident that Lord Sargatanas has matters well in hand.”
Relieved, Eligor sat back. He picked up his pen and notebook.
Faraii, seeing this, reached for his sword and stood up.
“I am sorry, Eligor, not tonight. I would just like to retire to my chambers. It has been a tiring day. Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“Of course, Faraii,” Eligor said, hoping that he had managed to conceal his disappointment.
Eligor returned his gaze out over Adamantinarx. When he looked back, a moment later, to where Faraii had stood, the Baron was gone.
* * * * *
A light storm blew embers down upon the streets before him. It was night and Hani took full advantage of the greater darkness to slip down the crowded streets unnoticed. The thoroughfares were only slightly less congested with souls than during the day, and he made an effort to blend in, to seem as though he were a member of the various bustling work-gangs.
Hani felt the solid weight of the Burden, which was, for now, fortunately, embedded in the small of his back. Had it been jutting from one of his legs or, worse, in a foot, he might not have been as reckless. Just one of the many things, he reflected, that had fallen into place, compelling him to break away, to attempt the utterly unthinkable.
A plan had begun to form while he had watched the demon lord. Div and the others had all seen Sargatanas kneel, but no one had seen why. They had listened intently, hours later, when Hani had told them what he had seen. And when he had sketched out his plan as best he could they looked at one another without expression. He could not discern whether they understood or merely thought him raving. Either way, he was going to leave; there simply was no point in trying to explain to them what he could not fully explain to himself; his inner vision was cloudy at best. He would attempt to confront the demon with the statue, if even for a moment, to simply ask him who he had once been. If it failed, he would be destroyed or worse, but he would have tried.
A few days after Sargatanas had left the construction site, the demons had lit the colossus’ head like a giant torch, scattering the Scourges who had been perched upon it. Gauging this as the perfect distraction, Hani had faded away into the crowd. Even he was amazed that it had worked.
Now, as he walked, he felt a raging frustration at having to match his pace to the slower, stumbling souls around him. Far up ahead, through the darkness and smoke and blowing embers, he saw the dim silhouette of the palace dome high atop the center mount, its pinpoints of flame marking its countless levels, and realized that it would take many hours to reach the palace. He did not have any idea what he would do once he was near its towering gates, but he trusted that he would find some way in.
When will the Overseers notice my absence? he thought, with a stab of fear, for the thousandth time since he had left. And when will my Burden betray me? He had seen what happened to souls when the black orb had been triggered, how they had dropped to the ground and, screaming, been incinerated from within by a single fiery glyph. Only gray ash had remained. It won’t happen to me… it won’t.
He moved on, looking into the faces of the souls as he passed them.
Rended, twisted, cleft, pierced, or severed. Eyeless, jawless, noseless, or even entirely faceless. This was humanity. Or most of it. Thrust into Hell by their own hand, by their irresistible weaknesses. This was what they had made of themselves. He felt neither sympathy nor disdain. Just an odd belonging that he was not sure felt very good.
War, it had been whispered, was again looming. Long files of legionaries and officers were everywhere, but he passed them confidently; they had no reason, as yet, to be looking for him. Once they knew he was missing it would not matter that he was surrounded by millions of souls just like him. The Burden would betray him. That was its purpose.
Hani pushed on in what he came to think of as an exercise not of stealth or speed but of patience. The milky Acheron vanished behind the blocks of low buildings as he walked farther up toward the city’s center. With all his walking, though, he was amazed at how the center mount never seemed any closer.
Sounds of torment emanated from within most of the low, featureless buildings along the avenue, sounds that Hani barely heard anymore. Most of the meaty exteriors were punctured by a window, and, as he passed these, everything from sobs to screams reached out onto the street. None of it shocked him; his work-gangs had labored in proximity to buildings like these frequently, and his own curiosity about their inhabitants had long ago been satisfied. These were simply the places where the worst souls were kept and punished, their torments in many cases gruesomely tailored to their crimes.
Hani looked ahead, trying to penetrate the clots of souls and legionaries and Scourges, and saw a contingent of demon phalangites some hundred feet away. Larger and more solid than most demons, they strode slowly through the crowds, long hand-pikes shouldered, intentionally trampling any hapless soul too slow to avoid them. In fact, Hani thought, it appeared that they were going out of their way to inflict damage on the crowd.
Hani decided to duck into the first open doorway that he could find; demons rarely entered domiciles. A procession of odd foreigners stumbled past him, eyeless, beating hand-drums and in some kind of chanting trance. Were they souls? He could not tell, but he used them to hunker behind nonetheless, entering the nearest building unseen.
Within the dimly lit cell the air was thick and foul, redolent of smoking flesh. Burning embers, the odor’s source, provided the only faint light. In the room’s center was a solitary seated figure. Oversized and gangrenous entrails spilled from within him, forming the seatlike pedestal to which he was forever affixed. A long stream of saliva descended from his mouth and onto his glistening, embedded arms.
He was moaning and it took a few moments for him to realize he was not alone.
“Who’s there?” the soul whispered, his voice strained and filled with pain. He tried to move his head, but large growths, arranged like a grotesque necklace, inhibited him. “I know you’re there… who are you?”
Hani ignored him.
“Why won’t you say something?” The soul began to sob, his body convulsing. The organs wobbled and Hani looked away.
“Shut up!”
“Ha,” he wheezed, “you’re in my cell and you tell me to shut up!”
Hani peered cautiously around the door frame. The phalangites were nearer, and he could clearly hear the cries of the pedestrians and their bones snapping underfoot. He pulled his head back in and turned to face the soul.
“There is a problem out on the street. I’ll be gone when it’s passed.”
“You’re a soul. What are you doing running around on your own?”
“That’s my business.”
The phalangites must be very close, Hani thought. Like waves breaking before the bow of a barge on the Acheron, he saw the crowd just outside begin to part, falling and crashing into one another in an effort to avoid being trampled.
Hani caught a glimpse of the phalangites’ armored thighs as they passed the low doorway.
“What’s happening out there?” the soul asked.
“A cohort of phala—”
“No, no, I don’t mean just now. I mean… I am hearing soldiers—lots of soldiers—passing.”
“There will be a war,” Hani said plainly.
“There is always war.”
“This is different. More
troop movement. More urgency to it all. It all seems familiar, somehow.”
The soul’s sudden, snapping cough sent a chill down Hani’s spine. “Familiar?” he finally gasped weakly.
“The urgency, the excitement of war. I know this feeling. And seeing all those troops…” Hani’s voice trailed off. The stirrings of his Life were tantalizing, and their wisps were never to be ignored. A series of the most fleeting impressions passed through his mind: a vast, blue sea of water dotted with strange ships, men—not souls—in burnished cuirasses holding swords and spears, and then a field of death with red-washed bodies piled eye high. What it meant Hani could not imagine. But he tucked the memories away, next to the others he had made a mental catalog of. Next to the little statue, they were his most treasured possessions.
“Are you still there?” Hani heard the desperation, the plaintiveness, in the soul’s voice; he might have been the soul’s first visitor in millennia. The loneliness was incomprehensible.
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please don’t leave. Talk with me for a bit. It’s been so long. Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”
Hani backed silently toward the door and then turned and looked out. The street, uncharacteristically silent save for the moans, was painted in fresh, slick blood and crushed souls, many of whom were dragging themselves toward the doorways. Long, wet footprints, like brushstrokes, trailed off in the direction the phalangites had taken.
As he crossed the threshold and walked away from the domicile he could feel the soul’s fading, whispered entreaties clawing at his conscience, compelling him to stay. He set his jaw, looked up at the palace, and picked his way through the sliding bodies.
Some miles later, the avenue regained its former aspect, the crowds merely stepping over any residue from the phalangites’ passing. The thoroughfare dipped down and Hani faded behind a caravan of lumbering soul-beasts draped in billowing concealing blankets and laden with goods, led by robed guides and destined for the palace. And once again, walking alongside the enormous creatures, he felt that strange stirring of memory. He knew that he had lived before, but as with all souls, that Life and its memories were still opaque. A mystery. As he hid amidst the shuffling creatures’ legs, an ember of optimism brightened, fanned by the awareness that he might actually recover his memories, that he might come to know who he had been. He did not know what forces were at play or whether any of these new feelings were due to his possessing the tiny statue. Before he had acquired it there been no such sudden flashes. With a pang of awareness, Hani realized that something had changed, that he was regaining a sense of self that had been forcibly taken from him and that the memories might be a part of some regrowth. It was a brightening thought that he almost dared not to contemplate, but, despite himself, it drove him onward with a growing sense of expectation.
Chapter Thirteen
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Two weeks after Sargatanas’ momentous decision Eligor and Valefar descended the long, arcing causeway to the palace gate in uncustomary silence. Both demons were deep in thought, wrestling with the implications of recent events, and when they stopped just outside the gate to await the arrival of Bifrons and Andromalius they remained silent. Much had been accomplished in the brief time since that decision, but much more needed to be done. The two immense shallow-bowled braziers, mounted atop building-sized pedestals that flanked the causeway gate, cast a fluctuating orange glow and deep, wavering shadows upon the guards and the milling crowd below. Their seventy-foot flames reached into the sky with the roar of a dozen furnaces.
As he waited, Eligor surveyed the dense crowd that seemed to always gather around the gate. Mostly lesser demons seeking audiences with administrative officials, there was the odd sprinkling of Waste travelers, shepherded work-gangs and exotic soul-beast caravans newly arrived from distant cities. The confusion of noise that Eligor knew must arise from them could barely be heard against the sound of the angry flames from high above.
Finally, he spotted the floating sigils and then the tall, vertical banners of the two approaching demon lords. Both had apparently met up before reaching the gate, and their file of soul-beasts and escort-guards snaked well behind and down into the darkness of the city streets below.
The crowd parted at the prodding of the gate-guard, and two especially large military Behemoths trudged into view. Three times the size of the average soul-beast and powerfully muscled, they were former human kings designated for special use because of their lost rank. Each was ornately caparisoned in rich robes, festooned with elaborately threaded harnesses, pierced in a hundred different ways with jeweled nails and rings, and bearing smoking incense burners that trailed long, twisting lines of bluish smoke. Beneath the robes, and reflecting the new political footing, Eligor saw the dull sheen of black, volcanic armor.
Valefar stepped forward and greeted each Demon Minor as they dismounted their Behemoths. His was an affable manner, and Bifrons and Andromalius both responded in kind. One could not have imagined, Eligor mused, that Adamantinarx was on the brink of the most divisive war Hell had ever seen.
Both visitors flanked the Prime Minister as they headed up the causeway with Eligor in tow. The contrast between Valefar and the two demons was striking. They, having traveled in comfort, were swathed in their finery and sprinkled with gold and jewels, while Valefar’s dark, unadorned skins were drab by comparison. It was, Eligor thought, emblematic of this regime that its wealth was not worn for all to see.
When they reached the main palace Valefar led the party into the great entry hall. It was a large, basilica-like area, well lit, and filled with officials and guards ebbing and flowing, paying the newcomers no heed. There, in the middle of the floor and seemingly waiting for him, was a single hovering glyph of golden fire that, when he raised his hand, quickly sank into his palm. When Valefar turned to them a look of mild surprise was written upon his features. His gaze lasted for only a moment and then he led the group down a series of corridors, which grew more and more unfamiliar to Eligor with every turn. They were gradually descending; that much was clear. But the palace was so vast, so filled with administrative levels, that it came as no real surprise to him that they might be in an area that he had not traversed. As they proceeded, the number of chambers diminished until they found themselves heading down an ill-lit and doorless passageway.
The realization that he was completely lost came at nearly the same moment that they arrived at their destination. They reached the end of the corridor and stopped in an anteroom adorned only with a semicircular stone bench facing a single closed door. While the others sat at the urging of Valefar, Eligor looked at the tall door before him, framed oddly with the rarest white native rock, and noticed that there was still stone dust on the flagstones before it. Large footprints were still visible, as if recently made. And looking up, over the lintel, Eligor saw Sargatanas’ elaborate circular sigil subtly inlaid in the finest flowing silver.
Eligor suddenly realized that not a soul-brick was anywhere to be seen, that the anteroom was built entirely of stone, and that their degree of dressing was of the highest order. Fresh, white dust stuck to his dark fingers when he ran them over the stones’ surface.
They waited for some time and then, without fanfare, the door opened noiselessly and Sargatanas emerged. The two earls stood and obediently knelt before their patron. For a moment their fiery sigils separated, intertwined with their lord’s, and then returned, resuming their positions above each demon’s head.
“Welcome, Brothers. It is good to see my two closest neighbors again after so many centuries. I understand that you both prosper, and for that I am pleased,” Sargatanas said plainly. “However, I am sure you are both aware that your wards, sharing common borders with my own, are threatened by Lord Astaroth’s intentions. As are mine.”
Both Demons Minor nodded.
“For the hundredth time we are going to have to defend
ourselves against one of our brethren—be it Astaroth or one of Beelzebub’s clients—who thinks it necessary to upset the balance among us. It is a cycle seemingly without end. A cycle that has its origins in the First Infernal Bull issued so long ago during the first Council of Majors—that we may never attack a sovereign capital. ‘We may wage war to gain territory, only as it does not jeopardize another demon’s existence.’ So says the Bull and so said I until of late. Now, however, I cannot subscribe to this law any longer,” said Sargatanas, pausing, waiting for the statement to sink in. “Bifrons… Andromalius, I am about to shake the very foundations of Hell. With your aid, I am going to challenge everything that this world stands for. Brothers, I am Heaven bound.”
Eligor saw the shock written upon their faces. They sat transfixed by their lord, looking at him with mouths partially agape.
Andromalius regained himself and said, “Lord, you do not really think that engaging in a war such as you envision can—”
“I do,” Sargatanas said, his voice resonant. “It is naive to think that what transpires here is not being watched from Above. Would we miss an opportunity to watch Them if we could? What have we shown Them after these countless eons here in Hell? We have fulfilled every one of Their claims against us, proven ourselves to be anything but the angels we once were, and denied ourselves any consideration for return. We must show that after all of these grim millennia, after all the pain and punishment, we are capable of change. I am convinced that if our intentions and actions are clear—that our opposition to Beelzebub and his government is in earnest—They will take notice. And that is the first step to regaining our lost grace.”
Bifrons stood. He looked agitated. Eligor almost felt sorry for them. They had no choice but to go along with their patron, but they did not have to accept his precepts.
“You are talking about total war,” Bifrons said, shaking his spined head in disbelief, “a war that would engulf all of Hell. No demon would be able to remain neutral. And to what end?”
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