Chapter Nineteen

DIS

The Keep was more silent than Adramalik had ever remembered it. What few functionaries he saw in its corridors and rooms bore the unmistakable mark of terror upon their faces. Tales were beginning to filter up from its base, tales of what had happened out in the city's Sixtieth Ward after the Prince had finally resigned himself to the fact that his Consort was no longer in Dis. What Adramalik heard made even him shudder.

He had been present when the Prince had finally come to the dark conclusion that Lilith was gone. Adramalik and Agares and a few other principals had, at first, stood rooted to the floor with mouths agape when Beelzebub's howling rage had manifested itself. Tiny flies, growing in size, had peeled away from his body in a seemingly unending, rising spiral, horrific to behold. And their faces, faces that he knew to have once belonged to angels, were pocked and distorted, torn and twisted, sublime in their madness. Each bloated fly was different from its brother, but each bore many limbs that ended in black blades that snapped and cut the air as the creatures, enlarging as they flew, jostled toward the Rotunda's openings and flooded forth into the dark skies of Dis. Relief spread through Adramalik's shaking body as he watched them depart; for a moment he had actually wondered if Beelzebub's rage might spill over onto him and Agares and indeed everyone in the Keep. But in a few short minutes the small gathering was standing alone in the quiet Rotunda, left wide-eyed and trembling, watching the frantic swaying of the skins above. Adramalik could not remember when his master had left the Keep last.

Even now he could hear, in the fearful silence that smothered the Keep, the echo of the whir of their wings and the sound their clattering bodies made, and a part of him held his breath in awe.

A day later, after the Prince had resumed his throne, someone had ventured into the Sixtieth Ward and come back to the Keep with a tale of what he had seen there. It was a large precinct, but, even so, nothing had been spared.

Souls, demons, buildings, even the very streets had been shredded, chopped, and ultimately defiled. Squashed hummocks of body parts stood in the plazas, misshapen islands in expanding lakes of blood. The stench of tens of thousands of rotting, half-consumed bodies, of buildings chewed and vomited up and stinking feces from the ensuing feast, had been overpowering even by hellish standards. And over the entire ward a fog of blood hung so thick that it made the carnage all the worse for its gradually revealed butcheries. The fog blanketed the ward for a few days and then it moved, by either command or the caprices of the infernal zephyrs, off toward the Wastes to ultimately descend, he had heard, upon Adamantinarx. Adramalik did not agree with those who rationalized it as a natural event; he knew his Prince too well and knew that he had every reason to suspect where his Consort had fled to. The fog was a warning. But, Adramalik pondered, how had she so easily managed to leave Dis unseen and unquestioned? This was something he needed to find out.

Now keeping to himself, alternately pacing and sitting at his desk in his chambers, he felt no sense of comfort, even surrounded as he was by his loyal Knights. They, too, knew that venturing forth might provoke the dark figure who sat so nearby upon his charnel throne, wrapped in black hatred and paranoia. It was a time to measure one's appearances, a time to be careful.

ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

Lilith entered the arcade and passed a dozen ambassadors as they exited the main chamber. She was becoming a regular visitor, and none of the guards she stepped past challenged or even questioned her. Her freedom, a balm to her, was that complete.

Counter to her fears, her sense of awakening had not, in any way, diminished as she shared more and more time with Sargatanas. When he wasn't holding councils with Valefar and Eligor and the others he would walk the streets of Adamantinarx with her, and gradually she came to realize that they were both enjoying and looking forward to their meetings. Frequently their conversations centered upon the souls, and her philosophies of tolerance toward them, and Sargatanas, to her delight, seemed receptive.

She saw him for short periods only, as he was consumed with the affairs of his great city, but the encounters were growing pleasantly, uncharacteristically, relaxed. The huge demon's tone was less tense, less filled with the edge of pain that she remembered from so long ago, which was even more exceptional given the imminence of conflict that loomed over the city. She had to attribute it to her presence, a fact that made her smile when she was back in her chambers.

Lilith entered the Audience Chamber and saw that it was suffused with a light miasma of smoke that hung like a gently shifting veil softening the finger of ruddy light that dropped from above. A flock of silver-black Abyssals circled the inner dome on distance-muffled wings, disappearing in its shadows, briefly glittering in the light like coins thrown into the air. Looking toward the throne, she saw Sargatanas seated and flanked by Valefar and some ambassadors, and she felt more protected than she would have ever imagined before. She had to admit that, despite her independent inner self, she liked the feeling.

Arriving at the pyramid's foot, she waited as Sargatanas disengaged himself and descended the long stairs and she wondered, not for the first time, where today's special destination, only hinted at by his messenger, would be. Just in case, she carried her traveling skins. The city's sights had been amazing: the mammoth, incandescent Forges, the vast artisans district, the seemingly endless Armory, the organized and efficient Abyssal husbandry pens. But while these had all been impressive locations, it was the enormous Library within the palace itself that sparked her imagination. She could not yet read the ornate script, but Sargatanas himself had promised to teach her and, most intriguingly, he had told her that there were a few rich texts that recounted life so long ago in the Above. These, she knew, would prey upon her imagination only until they yielded their contents. On a deeper level, she looked forward to her lessons not only for the knowledge gained but for the shared intimacy as well.

"You can leave those behind," Sargatanas said, indicating the draped skins that Lilith carried. "Eligor will have them brought back to your chambers."

"Are we staying in the palace, then?" she said, hoping for the first of her lessons.

"Actually, Lilith, we're going to be very close to where we stand at the moment."

"I am intrigued, my lord," she said, laying the garments down carefully, patting them unconsciously. It worried her only a little to leave them behind.

She and Sargatanas crossed the broad floor, wended their way through the forest of the arcade's pillars at its periphery, and exited into the great entry hall. Sargatanas led her through the crowd of functionaries that had stopped and knelt in place before their lord.

He took her through a tall doorway, passing through a floating guard-glyph, and gradually Lilith became aware that they were slowly descending, corridor by corridor beneath the main floor. At each important juncture they passed through another glyph.

Sargatanas led her in silence and as the many branching corridors grew darker and lessened to one, only the sounds of her clawed feet, his deep breathing, and the fires of his head broke the stillness.

Lilith did not care how long the walk through the labyrinthine halls took; it was another adventure with Sargatanas, whose proximity was becoming both reassuring and disturbingly necessary. The novelties of both feelings, the sheer improbability of them, were things she went over frequently and accepted willingly. She had been spiritually in exile for too long.

The corridor's ceiling rose, and before her she saw a doorway and a bench. Above the lintel was Sargatanas' seal wrought in flowing silver, inset into the purest white stone, and with a stab of realization Lilith knew that something secret and special lay behind the imposing door.

Sargatanas stopped just as he put his dark hand upon the door's latch. Lilith watched him pause and counted her heartbeats while he looked down at the flagstones. Some inner conflict was at work upon him, and she thought to reassure him that he did not have to show her what lay beyond. But she said nothing.

The dull thunk of the latch was loud in the otherwise tomblike silence.

A vestibule just behind the door opening led into a much brighter room beyond, and Sargatanas looked up at her, his glittering eyes intense as he carefully watched her expression. He said nothing, but somehow she knew that he wanted her to enter first, and, moving slowly, she stepped past him and over the threshold.

Into Heaven.

As she walked forward Lilith brushed her fingers unconsciously along the wall's lines of incised script, her wide eyes fixed on the lambent room so unlike anyplace else in all of Hell.

She moved from statue to frieze to mosaic as if she were dreaming, slowly, and with the feeling that she was not within herself. Occasionally, like someone who had been blind for all her existence, she would reach out and, with a delicate finger that rivaled the paleness of the stones around her, lightly trace it across the carved, perfect face of some seraph or up the smooth side of a golden spire or over the jeweled streams that flowed throughout the cities and fields.

As she made her way around the room she grew more and more exhilarated, reaching a point of near breathlessness in her eagerness to drink it all in. Sargatanas quietly whispered a running commentary and Lilith attentively listened to every word. She could not understand all of their meanings, but most served to heighten her sense of wonderment. The hosts gathered before her and she could nearly hear their silver voices raised in praise of their Throne's manifold glories. Strange tears of joy, of unfamiliar exultation, rolled down her cheeks and she felt weak and light-headed. Once, she stumbled and nearly fell, but a strong, dark hand caught her.

When she reached the final frieze the Radiance she saw reflected there, the sheer majesty and beauty of it, overwhelmed her almost as much as her hatred for it, and the room spun before her tear-filled eyes and went dark and she collapsed. She felt Sargatanas scoop her up and place her gently upon a central bier, an unadorned stone platform she was sure he used in some private ceremony.

This is where he is from. This is where he yearns to go back, she thought, staring up at the shimmering opal ceiling. And then a coldness gripped her. This is where I can never go.

Nor would I want to. A clawing sadness like none that she had known, not even when Ardat Lili had not come back, washed powerfully through Lilith, replacing the fragile, newborn joy she had felt. I must not let him see this.

But it was too late. Sargatanas leaned concernedly over her, and, like smoke dissipating, she saw him for the first time for what he had been. Perhaps it was the influence of the images she had just seen or how he wanted her to see him. but looking in his eyes she saw the seraph. Not even with Lucifer had she been so sure of anyone's inner self. There is so much pain and longing in those eyes.

Sargatanas lifted her upright and, hesitating for a moment, ran two fingers through her hair.

Sargatanas paused and Lilith realized that, from that moment on, she would not be able to look at him without seeing that true, angelic core, no matter how awful he made himself.

"Lilith, until you came to Adamantinarx, this ... this place was my heart."

She could not avoid looking into the glowing hole in his chest as he spoke and realized for the first time what it must mean for there to be nothing within. The loss must have been nearly impossible to bear.

"Don't," he said quietly, wiping away the tears that again welled from her eyes. "Your being here fills both places," he said, indicating the room and then his chest.

Lilith smiled through the curtain of tears and realized that she, too, felt a sense of completion. She swung her legs off the bier and stood shakily.

"Now," she said, pulling him slowly at first toward the vestibule, "tell me again, from the beginning. About Heaven."

THE FIELDS OF ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

The hot wind, hotter than any desert wind he had ever known, blew across the plain, burning his unprotected face, unnoticed. Standing upon a hillock, his back to the Acheron and the city beyond, Hannibal surveyed the massed troops—his troops—and felt drained.

It seemed hopeless. The exuberance that had been building steadily within him as he had assembled his army was dissipating just as quickly as he began to realize what it would take to get them battle ready.

What was I thinking? Adamantinarx is not Qart Hadasht; its buildings are still made of souls! And I cannot have the pick of the finest mercenaries money can buy. I have these instead.

Twenty thousand souls stood upon the field's gray skin, the fruits of his recruitment, an army that even the term "ragtag" would elevate. Hannibal had never anticipated the problems that would arise in trying to form units when no two souls shared any apparent strengths. He had been forced to make his officers break down individuals into categories. Those whose arms were dominant or even possessed two were either handed weapons or, more often, adapted to bear them by demons specially attached to Hannibal's retinue by Sargatanas. But those adaptations were rarely completely successful.

Mago and he had been lucky in finding souls with any significant military background, and those they appointed as officers. Upon his order, he watched them begin to train the souls, and shortly he turned away from the scene, chin down in disgust. It really was hopeless. But other challenges had seemed hopeless before. And he had prevailed. He turned back, and this time his keen eyes studied the figures below, appraising and quantifying them. Slowly, as he shifted his gaze from cohorts of swordsmen to spear-bearers to mace-wielders, patterns of movement began to appear and he saw the glimmer of possibility emerge. It would be hard, but he would not give up and melt away into the crowds of the city he had sworn allegiance to. He would see it through if for nothing less than his oath to Sargatanas. Or wind up a brick, trying.