Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

When they were outside the Keep once again, the demons took wing without exchanging a word. Only when they had flown the breadth of Dis, landed, and approached its gate did they speak.

Valefar looked as downcast as Eligor felt, but Sargatanas seemed strangely in good spirits. Eligor shrugged when Valefar glanced at him; both demons had thought their lord would have been filled with anger over their aborted meeting.

Valefar shook his head, a wry look of incredulity written upon his face.

"What is it, my lord?" he said. "Does Hell's firmament suddenly have a second star?"

"Not a second star, Valefar, but a new moon, pale and beautiful and luminous." His eyes seemed fixed inward.

And Eligor realized what had happened. Lilith had had an effect far greater upon the Demon Major than either of his companions could have guessed. That distant look spoke volumes.

All three walked in their own astonished silences until they had cleared the Porta Viscera. They stopped just outside the gate.

"We should make all haste back to Adamantinarx," Sargatanas said, narrowing his eyes as he looked out at the fires on the horizon. "I know Astaroth; he will not wait long to attack."

"His desperation is like a gnawing beast at his throat," said Valefar, momentarily distracted. Eligor saw that he was looking at something white in his palm. Before Eligor could get close enough to see it, Valefar had tucked whatever it was into his traveling skins.

Without a backward glance at Dis, the three ascended into the air and banked toward Adamantinarx.

Chapter Ten

ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

The long journey back to Adamantinarx taxed Eligor more than he thought possible; he never thought the trip could be made so rapidly. If anything, the two Demons Major had held back because of him.

The approach to the city was obscure; an eruption to the west had created a vast front of dark ash clouds, and the city was just beginning to feel its arrival.

When Sargatanas, Valefar, and Eligor alighted on a rise outside the city, Adamantinarx was already on a war footing. Zoray had seen to that. Protocol dictated that they be met at the Eastern Gate by an escort contingent of Zoray's Foot Guard, and the party could see them gathered beyond the wall.

These were the very best of the Household Guard, each stone-gray soldier bearing two curved lava-tempered swords that grew, instead of hands, from his thick wrists.

Zoray's First Centurion of the Foot Guard stepped forward carrying Sargatanas' robes of state and bladed scepter, and following him was an imposing line of standard-bearers, each carrying a stretched demon skin upon a pole. Some of the skins retained their owner's bones, and they clacked together in the hot breeze.

When Sargatanas was before them, adjusting his robes, the assembled soldiers knelt in unison, fists to the ground.

"Are these what I think they are, centurion?" asked Sargatanas, silvered eyes sweeping across their number. The skins' empty eye sockets gaped back at him.

"Yes, my lord," he said, kneeling. "The Baron expressed his hope that this display of Astaroth's spies would please you. It was Zoray's idea to let him handle the problem. Apparently the skins were removed in ways that—"

"Faraii has been very busy, I can see. As has our venerable neighbor," Sargatanas interrupted, smiling slightly to Valefar. "Thank the Baron for his diligence and good work, centurion, and have these displayed prominently at each gate."

"Sire!"

As the centurion departed, three giant soul-beasts were brought up by their white-masked mahouts and the weary demons were helped into their howdahs. From his high vantage Eligor watched as the clay-colored throngs of foot-dragging souls, most of them work-gangs whipped aside by Scourges, crouched against the sides of buildings. The streets were, if anything, more crowded with the additional flow of legionaries streaming out to assembly points outside the city.

There were many more soldiers now in Adamantinarx than when the three demons had left. In his mind's eye, Eligor could easily picture the raising of additional legions in the fertile lava-fields not so far south of the Acheron. Dispatched from the palace, dozens of decurions bearing Sargatanas' conjuring glyphs, Eligor imagined, were coursing over the lava incunabula, carefully choosing the best sites. A fertile lava pit could easily yield a thousand legionaries, but finding one was a challenge; successful decurions were often rewarded with citations and sometimes promotion.