Heaven's Lies

by Daniel Caet

  The seed of all that had suffered had begun to germinate within me, and it was about to change completely my whole being. The truth of my misery, of the mistakes made, fuelled the flame within me, a flame of destruction and revenge. And there, in the middle of the mountains, I changed my name. Helel was no longer, Helel had died. From that moment I would use another one of the names that my father had given me, I would be Lucifer, the bearer of light; only this time the light would not be the light of my father's love and piety, but my own fire of vengeance, and heaven and earth would burn in it.

  I spent months in those mountains. My body fed on lizards and birds and the water of the streams, my heart fed on hatred and rage. As if something had been unleashed in me, the idea of revenge unlocked all the power in me. Those skills I had discovered while living with Armesh were now perfected and increased along many others. I could feel the power boiling inside me, a power like the one I had when I was an angel.

  Finally, the day arrived when I decided to leave my retirement. My plan was simple in its goals; on the one hand, to find my children, on the other, to recover my soul wherever it was so I could enter again into the kingdom of heaven and make the archangels pay for what they had done. I would return my father's kingdom to its original order and make sure it stayed like that. I would govern my father's work with an iron hand until his return, and when he came, I would show him how, despite having abandoned me, I had been faithful to him, and then I would ask him one question. Why?

  I went down the mountain roads to the valley and walked the caravan route. I was aware that my appearance after the months spent on the mountain was extremely alarming, but I was not worried because of my newly recovered powers. Just a couple of days after leaving the mountains I found a caravan going north. When they saw me, the caravan stopped thinking that someone traveling alone and without luggage in that remote part should have been assaulted by thieves.

  “Greetings, good man,” said a man somewhat older than Armesh coming down from one of the camels.

  “Greetings. I am very happy that our paths have crossed.”

  “It does not surprise me, of course,” he said, dismounting. “As soon as we have seen you, we have guessed that something must have happened to you. My name is Ushair and I am the owner of this caravan. Tell me, have you been attacked by thieves?”

  “That's right, they attacked my caravan about two days ago, I'm the only survivor.”

  “I'm very sorry, it must have been terrible. We go to Larak, in the east, if our route suits you we will be happy for you to join us, or, otherwise, bring you to the next village on the way.”

  That was the opportunity I was waiting for. Staring into that man's eyes I entered his mind, taking control. I felt how he surrendered to me effortlessly, and despite the time spent since I have used that power for the lats time, it was easy for me to turn him into my puppet.

  “You will change the route of your caravan towards the city of Kish, in the north. You will provide me with clean clothes, and you will forbid the rest of your servants to comment on my presence among you. For the world I will be a distant relative that you have picked up on the way.”

  The man said nothing, but his pupils dilated slightly and he turned immediately to indicate to all his servants the change of route as if it had been his idea without knowing anything about my little trick. That night we camped on the outskirts of a small village and I was finally able to clean myself up, put on the clothes they had given me and make a decent dinner.

  The city of Kish was one of the northern state cities of Sumer, and it was the place where I could start the search for my children. If, as I thought, Liliath had hidden them to hurt me, she was the only one who could tell me where they were. But if I wanted to find Liliath, I would have to find Arpasetaj, or rather, the demon who was posing as him, and in Kish I could find the creature that could help me. The city had long been one of the stones in the angelic boot. For some reason that no one could explain, it had become an occultist center of the first order. Seers, witches, sorcerers and healers counted for hundreds in their streets, and in the same way did the number of clients who came to them. Inevitably, where there is that kind of people, there are demons and in Kish the lower level demons had found a perfect paradise to mix with humans and create a kind of underworld where nothing good could happen. In the eternal war between angels and demons there were heroes, cowards and traitors on both sides, and the creature that I needed to find had long been a confidant of the angelic armies that provided information on the movements that occurred in the demonic world. If anyone knew or could find out where Liliath and her lover were, it was him, Ascaroth.

  The trip to Kish took us more than a week, but we finally arrived in the city shortly after sunrise. On the outskirts of the city, we found other caravans waiting for permission to unload the goods they had brought there. To avoid the questions that would have caused a caravan not expected in the city and with no business to do there I had Ushair stop the caravan just before reaching the walls, and there I took control of his mind making them return to their original destination in Larak as soon as I left them. I picked up my few possessions, put my cloak over my head and headed for the interior of the city. As soon as I crossed the walls of Kish, the memories of my previous visits filled my mind. It was different to see the city with the eyes of a human, of course, but something was obvious, Kish was not Uruk. If I had expected the straight, clean and tidy streets of Uruk, my mind had completely deceived me. Kish was an authentic labyrinth of narrow streets, dirty and crowded with people in all its neighbourhoods, from those near the river and the walls to the neighbourhoods of the upper area near the temple. The resident goddess of Kish, as in Uruk, was Innana and the kings of Kish, like Gilgamesh in Uruk, had erected an impressive temple in her honor although in this case the temple was rarely visited and the number of priests and priestesses in it was scarce. The city and its people had all the supernatural advice they needed inside their own walls and nobody paid attention to their goddess. I knew that finding Ascaroth would not be easy, but I had an idea where I could start. I went to the neighbourhood of the sorcerers where the shops of men and women selling amulets and spells to remedy all kinds of evils were crammed in no order and I entered the first store I saw. The place was tiny, dark and the smell was acid and intense and got into the nose to the mouth making it difficult to breathe. As soon as she saw me enter, an old woman, small and wrinkled, addressed me.

  “Welcome to your home, stranger!” she said smiling and showing me the only two teeth she had left.

  “Well found, woman.”

  “Which of your evils is the one that I can help cure today, friend? A frail health, a broken heart, lost money or an enemy reluctant to leave this world?”

  “Actually, I'm looking for an amulet, a little special one,” I said with a fake smile.

  “If it is an amulet what you need you are in the perfect place, I have amulets of all kinds and for all uses, I can even create a specific one for you if none of those we have fits your needs.”

  “Actually, what I'm looking for is a Sesh dagger. Could you tell me where to find one?”

  The woman's face changed completely, and the smile faded from it. She took a few steps away from me, still staring at my face.

  “I see that you are an initiate. No doubt you know that Sesh daggers are not easy to find. That demon race, let's say, they do not give them voluntarily.”

  “Yes, I know,” I replied, still smiling. “But if you could maybe get in touch with someone who can get me to their owners, I could discuss that with them.”

  “I see. So, it's not the dagger you're looking for but the full service. Can I ask who the bastard is who will receive the visit of the Sesh?”

  “I prefer to keep it a secret, if you do not mind, I would not spoil the surprise.”

  “I get it. And what am I supposed to get out of contacting the right person?”

  The question did not catch me by surprise, I knew
that I was now in the underworld of Kish, a place where everything had a price, and nothing happened if you did not pay that price. The woman was still staring at me. Little by little I went up to her and put my face just a hand's breadth away from her. I could smell the sour smell of her body.

  “For starters you can keep your business and your life.”

  “If you think you will get something from me with threats, you are very wrong. Who do you think you are?” she answered defiantly.

  “Who I am is not important now. However, I have not been able to avoid noticing that you have some magnificent Ashek demon horns for sale. Horns that I do not think have been delivered by free will, am I wrong?” The woman's face began to change to a pale ash colour. “A curious race these Ashek, proud as few. I cannot imagine what they would do if someone let them know what particular items are for sale in your store.”

  The woman shuddered back, still looking at me.

  “I bought those horns from a merchant form Babylon, I have nothing to do with how they were obtained.”

  “Well, in that case, you can certainly explain it to the Asheks, and they'll understand, you have nothing to fear,” I said, turning around pretending to leave the store.

  “The one-eyed man,” the woman called.

  “What?”

  “The man who can help you lives in the money lenders neighbourhood. They call him the one-eyed man, but his name is Zusak.”

  Finally, the information I needed. I left the store making it clear to the woman that if she commented anything about my visit, the Ashek would hear about her. There was the possibility that the woman had lied to me, of course, but there was a part of what she had told me that suggested that Zusak was really Ascaroth. A long time ago I had ripped out Ascaroth's eye, leaving him one-eyed, and I was sure that it would not facilitate our conversation.

  I asked for directions to the money lenders neighbourhood which turned out to be in the highest part of the city where people with greater purchasing power had their homes and businesses. When I got there the change was obvious, the houses were much larger, some with their own wall that isolated them from the outside, and the streets were full of palanquines crowded with rich potentates and their women or lovers transported by slaves. That part of the city of Kish was fed by the underworld to maintain their standard of living, and many of its members were in fact the true owners of the businesses of the lower part, the public and not so public ones. I asked in a tavern where I could find Zusak, the one-eyed man, and to my surprise everyone seemed to know where he lived, a large house on the side of the temple. I went there immediately to avoid the news that someone was looking for him to arrive at Zusak before me. Upon arriving at the house, a servant met me at the door and told me to wait because his master was attending another client. He led me to a small room without any decoration with views of incredible gardens that seemed to be completely empty.

  Ascaroth had made of treason and murder a way of life that provided him with enormous amounts of money. But his greatest talent had been being able to carry on his business without directly engaging in anything. He was a seller of contacts and information. If someone needed a murderer, he would provide the name, if someone needed to know something about someone's business or personal life, he would obtain and sell the information, always without saying how or from whom he had obtained it. For years he had done exactly that with the angelic armies, in that case in exchange for protection. And, just as the lower levels of demonic castes tolerated their goings-on, the upper levels had a great interest in doing away with that element that unbalanced the status quo of the underworld, if such a thing existed. Of course, we knew that Ascaroth played in two bands and that it was more than likely that he tried to sell information about our movements to his demonic contacts, but that was precisely what had cost him his right eye as a lesson, a lesson that he would have hopefully learned.

  It was a long time before the same servant who greeted me at the door came back to accompany me to an adjoining room. If the waiting room was small, this was not much bigger, but in this case the walls were full of wooden shelves with the most varied objects from clay tablets used to write up to knives and amulets. When I found myself in front of him, I was glad to see that he could not recognise me.

  “Come in, foreigner, come and sit down. Can I offer you something to drink? A little wine maybe?”

  “No thanks, I hope I will not take much of your time,” I said, sitting down on a wooden chair in front of a table crowded with jewels.

  “You must forgive this disorder,” he said. “I just received a payment for a transaction that was pending, and I did not have time to clean up”

  It was evident that this was just a way of showing his expectations regarding the cost of his services, but I let him continue with his pantomime. The servant left the room and Zusak took a seat on the other side of the table.

  “And well, how can this humble merchant help you?”

  “Actually, I come to you in the hope that you are anything but a humble merchant. At least, that's what they told me.”

  “You should not believe everything you hear,” he said with a cynical smile, “people are not always good and like to invent what they do not know. Anyway, if you told me what you need I would be happy to try to help as much as possible.”

  It was clear that for him that play on words without content was something he did every day, and it was exactly what I remembered about Ascaroth, but although I was the first interested in the conversation being fluid, I did not have time to lose.

  “I need to find someone.”

  “Good, direct and bluntly, as I like it. And who would that person be that you have lost, if I can ask?”

  “I did not say it was a person.”

  Zusak's face changed leaving his smile behind to become absolutely serious.

  “I'm afraid that whoever sent you has given you the incorrect information, the kind of service you require is not among the ones I offer,” he said, rising from the table.

  “I still have not said who I'm looking for,” I answered without losing my composure.

  “You do not need to, you are a foreigner, we are in Kish, so I think it's better that we stop playing around. You are looking for a demon, and I do not provide that service, so it is better that you go back to where you came from.”

  “It's a disappointment,” I said, getting up from my chair as well. “I cannot believe you've changed so much, Ascaroth.”

  Hearing his real name made his whole body tense and he tried to flee back, but the wall blocked his way.

  “Who are you?” he said with a face of rage and panic.

  That game had lasted too long. I had gone there to get the information I needed, and I did not intend to leave without it. With a wave of my hand, his body rose in the air to hit the wall, being immobilised with his arms outstretched. At the same time my sword materialised in my hand illuminating the dark room.

  “I see you've forgotten the old friends, Ascaroth,” I whispered, drawing my sword close to his face. “But maybe your eye still remembers.”

  His face paled at the understanding of who was in front of him.

  “No, it cannot be. You ... they told me you were dead!”

  “You should not believe everything they say,” I said with a cruel smile.

  “But ... you're human. How is it possible?”

  “Let's leave aside the matters you should not care about, shall we? And let's take care of those that do have some importance for you, for example, what part of your body I will cut first if you do not give me the answer I need.”

  "No, no, please, I beg you, I'll tell you what you want to know, whatever!”

  “Now we begin to understand each other. I'm looking for a Dhorak demon, the last of his kind.”

  Ascaroth's eyes widened.

  “There are no Dhorak demons, your ilk finished them.”

  “Wrong answer,” I said, making a cut on his right arm with my sword. “The next cut wil
l release the arm off.”

  His screams of pain should have been heard in the whole neighbourhood, but I did not care.

  “I do not know anything about a Dhorak demon I swear, I do not lie to you, I promise” he said whimpering.

  “I do not believe you.” My sword spun in the air and a new cut appeared on his left arm. The screams rose again, that was not taking me anywhere, but I was enjoying the process. “The creature I seek is accompanied by a woman, a seer of great power. I'm sure you've heard something, and if you do not tell me what you know your servant will have to pick you up in pieces, have you understood?”

  His breathing stirred, and his eyes stared at me until, no doubt seeing that my threats were very real, he finally ducked his head in surrender.

  “I do not know who that demon or the woman who accompanies him are, much less where they can be. Nobody knows.”