Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

"By chance, I saw your familiar fly away into the night. It really was nothing more than a coincidence that I happened to be on a balcony. I heard something and looked up. I knew the moment I saw it what it was and what it represented. A plea for help."

"Answered by you," she said with a tinge of irony. But she reconsidered and said, "Thank you, Prime Minister."

He bowed slightly and left.

Lilith put the skins down and began to assemble some of her possessions from the scattered debris of her life in Dis.

ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

The game of subterfuge was over. Hani zigzagged as quickly as he dared between the myriad pillars of the arcade, always heading, he hoped, toward the dome's central chamber. The arcade, one of dozens radially arranged, was like an artificial gorge, narrow, with a fan-vaulted ceiling three hundred feet above and steep walls only occasionally interrupted by floor-level doorways. Fifty-foot columns, each bearing a lit sconce that faced the main passage, supported overhanging offices, and while the effect was airy, the fans of shadow they provided were welcome to Hani. He knew, though, that his discovery was only a matter of time.

Streams of legionaries filed through the stone forest of tall columns, pole arms upon their shoulders, the heavy scuffing of their bone-shod feet filling the space. They, too, were heading toward the great chamber, a fact that did nothing to comfort the soul but did convince him of his insanity. While they marched, without combat orders, they were not the real threat to his detection; their metallic eyes never seemed to stray from the soldier ahead of them. Hani knew that their heads were scooped, empty, and that they were nearly unable to think for themselves. But the centurions Hani watched carefully. Nearly ten feet tall, armored and wielding two sword hands, each proudly bore two upward-curving pectoral bars of flattened bone—prized signs of their rank. With experienced eyes ever gauging their surroundings, the centurions' vigilance sharply contrasted with their soldiers' indifference. Their battle-scarred faces bore the same two mouths—one for speaking, the other for feeding— that typified all lower demons, but, due to their rank, there was a slightly more refined quality to them. They were, the soul knew, imbued with a greater intelligence and, complimenting it, a greater sense of awareness. And they could, with a simple command-glyph, turn the mindless marching infantry into the irresistible tool of Hani's destruction. He could not help but compare them to the Overseers that he was so used to obeying and knew that the military demons' ferocity far outstripped them.

For all his care, he never saw the officer that raised the alarm, or the glyph that he knew, as he started to run, must have followed it. He only heard the echoing bark of command and the clatter of dozens of troops in the distance wheeling to pursue him.

The legionaries ran heavily in their tempered stone armor, and while they may have been comparatively fast upon the battlefield, they were gaining only slowly on Hani. For the first time in Hell, he ran, stretching his legs, stumbling a bit at first, but gaining in confidence as he raced between the columns. I might be able to elude this detachment, but if they send flying troops after me I'm finished. So far he had not seen any command-glyphs flash ahead of him. Probably the centurion felt he could handle one renegade soul. Maybe, Hani thought, just maybe, he was wrong.

* * * * *

Ten thousand lava-gray troops gathered in Sargatanas' Audience Chamber and stood at attention before the central pyramidal dais. The air was hazy with the steam that arose from the gathered army. Each Demon Minor, accompanied by his senior officers, stood beside his gaudy standard-bearer. The effect of all of the massed vertical banners, topped as they were with their incandescent regimental glyphs, was like a shifting sea of lava, hardened gray and spangled with myriad specks of magma. The sound of kettledrums, arrayed around the chamber's periphery, was muffled and distant, providing a marching cadence familiar to the entering legions.