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  When all was done for the day, Sargatanas walked along the fresh foundation for some distance, hands behind his back, inspecting the site. He was smiling broadly. His city would be built, and this ceremony was its harbinger. His elation was unmistakable, and Eligor and the others could not help but be swept up in it.

  Eligor watched with growing wonder and enthusiasm as Adamantinarx-upon-the-Acheron rose, layer by layer, like a dark, growing crystal from the fleshy ground. As a moon is to a sun, so was Adamantinarx to the cities of Heaven. Under the guiding hand of Sargatanas, the city’s planners did their best with the materials at hand to emulate the splendor of the Above. Eligor suspected that those similarities in architecture were born merely out of the desire of the demon planners to live as they had and not meant to be a cynical parody of a lost world. At times, as he walked the growing streets, Eligor felt at ease, even at home. But at other moments, moments when the memories of his former life came to him, the dark evocation made him sad.

  The great hunts that Sargatanas organized to rid the nearby Wastes of the Abyssal fauna and the Primordial natives would help cheer Eligor at these times. It was impossible for him to not share the wild exhilaration that everyone felt, charging through the chaotic landscape after the fearless wildlife, and he would soon forget his sadness. The indigenous creatures of Hell posed a continuing threat to the construction of Adamantinarx, and it was challenging, even for former angels, to run them down and destroy them.

  The city grew quickly and was populated just as quickly. There was no shortage of ready inhabitants. Hell, Eligor thought often, would never have a problem filling its cities. Soon not only demon workers but demons of all description as well as gray, twisted souls by the hundreds of thousands strode the broad avenues dwarfed by the enormous buildings; the only requirement to existing within the city’s boundaries was fealty to Sargatanas’ bidding.

  And when Adamantinarx had grown for ten thousand years, the two demons had found themselves together, surveying the great city from one of its lofty towers. Eligor, in a moment of sincere enthusiasm, had turned to Sargatanas and said, “This exile, my lord, has not been nearly as grievous as we had, at first, thought. So much has been achieved!”

  Sargatanas looked at him and said, “But Eligor, this is only the beginning of the beginning.”

  Sargatanas’ voice, all harmonics and rumbles like the woody intake of some giant pipe organ, had sounded sardonic. Eligor had no reply for his lord. They had spent so much time in Hell already. Eligor would always look back at that small conversation as the moment when the enormity of their banishment—of their shared eternity—crystallized.

  Perhaps, Eligor had thought during this early period, this is why there is such frenetic building. Like beasts who groom themselves when confronted with the insoluble, the demons, confronted with the eternity of their damnation, built. What else could they do but attempt to make this place their own? If they had to live in this place forever, they would try to tame it first, make it their own. But he knew that Hell could not be brought to heel. It was a living place, a place with its own will.

  Sargatanas went about his tasks with a preternatural intensity that bordered on the obsessive. He never tired of directing the large and small matters of state. It was, Eligor guessed, his way of not thinking about the reality of their situation. He seemed, too, to be preoccupied with the affairs of his neighboring fiefdoms. The lands of his mentor from before the Fall, Lord Astaroth, bordered his largest ward, and this pleased him. Astaroth was old, genial, perhaps a little inept in his governing, and Sargatanas looked with some dismay at his old teacher’s failures. But, in those early days, he posed no threat to Sargatanas or his realm and peace reigned.

  Adamantinarx was not dissimilar, in its composition, from many of the cities of Hell; its flagstoned streets ran red with the blood of its souls, its soul-bricks sighed and blinked as one passed them, and its countless low buildings groaned and shuddered like any others in any other infernal city. But it was also the least tortured of Hell’s cities, and its underlying openness was due solely to Sargatanas’ will. Just as Hell’s capital, Dis, was a horrific reflection of its creator, Beelzebub, Adamantinarx seemed, to its demonic inhabitants, as tolerant as its lord. There was a difference, a nobility, to this demon. Eligor could see it, as could any who entered Sargatanas’ court. When he laid the foundations, high atop the center mount, for his many-bastioned palace, he consulted not only with Halphas but also with each of his chief underlings. Eligor saw how this openhandedness affected the court, how it served not only to bring together each demon but also to make them loyal to Sargatanas.

  During one such consultation, high atop the windswept crag, Sargatanas had convened a general meeting to discuss the number of tiers the palace would have. The hot, ember-laden wind whipped Halphas’ plans about, making it hard for all to see, and Sargatanas bent down to gather a few rocks to anchor them. When he had arisen, a newcomer had joined the party, having climbed the steep ascent unseen by all. Eligor’s hand went to his sword, as did a half-dozen other demons’.

  “Do you not know me?” the shrouded figure asked, putting down a long, narrow box and looking directly at Sargatanas. A long, bony needle pierced the flesh of the newcomer’s hood, holding the heavy folds closed save for a gathered hole left for speech.

  Sargatanas was a full head and a half taller than all assembled. It was a habit of his, when confronted or challenged, to fold his arms and straighten up to his imposing full height. The bony plates of his face began to shift subtly while the flame that crowned him grew more brilliant. The gathered demons knew the signs when he grew impatient and each looked at one another with anticipatory relish.

  “How can I possibly know you, cloaked as you are? Your sigil is not lit.”

  “Surely you must remember me… from before the Fall. My voice, at least, must be familiar.”

  And of course, Eligor thought, that was the most absurd thing he had heard in a very long time. No one’s voice had remained the same. The bells of the Above had left their throats long ago, burned away by the fire and the screams. The newcomer was playing a foolish, dangerous game.

  Nonetheless, there was something compelling about the words that made Sargatanas look more intently at the enigmatic figure. Sargatanas’ personal Art was to divine the hidden, but, strangely, in this case he seemed unable.

  “Draw aside your hood.” The rumble in his voice was unmistakable.

  “Perhaps—if you were to ask me in the Old Tongue…”

  “My old tongue is gone. Only this sharp one remains.”

  “Well then, perhaps your ears and eyes are as they were Above.” The figure slowly reached up with a skin-covered, gloved hand and withdrew the bone needle from his hood. “Micama! Adoianu Valefar!”

  “Valefar!” exclaimed Sargatanas, and rushed to embrace him.

  Eligor and the others watched in wide-eyed astonishment as their lord released the Demon Major, the purest joy pouring forth from him. Here, Eligor knew, was Sargatanas’ dearest friend from before the Fall, the loss of whom had been spoken of only briefly, and to only a select few, for all the long millennia. Valefar’s absence had been a great blow to Sargatanas, as if more than just his great heart had been torn from him by the victorious seraphim.

  “Where have you been all this time?”

  “I was in Dis,” Valefar said, dropping his chin. “I lingered there much longer than I would have liked. It is not an easy place to leave, once one enters.”

  Sargatanas put his clawed hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “Ah, Valefar, all that is behind you. You are here now and here you will stay.”

  Picking up the long metal box, Valefar swung it easily over his shoulder, the charred plates of his face shifting into a broad grin.

  Together they descended the mount. As Sargatanas passed, he nodded to Halphas, who began to roll the plans into a tube; the palace could wait.

  Eligor saw how Valefar’s arrival seemed to complete his lord. T
hough both figures were physically greatly transformed by the Fall, it was easy to see how they might have been before the great battle. Sargatanas carried his looming flesh-cloaked form more lightly. And Valefar, who knew his somewhat secondary role perfectly, also knew exactly how to prize his lord away from his dark moods. Valefar’s was a lighter spirit that seemed, to Eligor, totally out of place in Hell.

  Chapter Two

  DIS

  Lucifer was gone.

  By all accounts, his had been the most spectacular descent of all. Those who were able to remember said that the entire sky had lit up with his passing, that the entire surface of Hell had glowed and rippled when he Fell, yet no one could remember any one site for his impact.

  Where? Where could he be? Adramalik wondered. It was a frequent thought, one that he indulged most often when he was alone, traversing the dank corridors deep within the immense pile that was Beelzebub’s citadel. Adramalik would stop at a tower window, peer out nearly two hundred spans above the tallest rooftop of Dis, and focus on the city and that question. It was a question that his master, the great Prince Beelzebub, allowed no one to utter.

  When his duties did not prevent it, Adramalik would linger at that same window staring out through the oily columns of smoke, the intermittent lightning, and the clouds at all that was Dis. The city was a paradigm for all that was Hell. As the First City, its layers went back to the Fall; its founding had been almost immediate. Its growth never stopped and the sheer profusion of cubelike buildings, twisted alleys, and clotted avenues was beyond count. Adramalik could stare at it for hours, spreading, he imagined, like a cancer upon the necrotic surface of Hell. As he peered downward, toward the base of the fortress, he could see in great detail the lower hovels, squeezed in among bigger, grander governmental buildings. All seemed to be tilted and angled, straining to shrink away from Beelzebub’s towering citadel. Which, in fact, they were. Adramalik liked that. It spoke of fear and power. Power. Where is Lucifer?

  Lucifer was absent and so, by default, his greatest general had assumed the scepter of rulership over Hell. Beelzebub was, some said and Adramalik agreed, an aggregate, a being who had added to his physicality the tattered remains of those fallen angels who had not arrived intact. These he had folded into himself, focusing and shaping and transforming their pain into the tens of thousands of flies that comprised his body. He was unique in Hell, and many wondered if his assumption to power had not been part of Lucifer’s plan. Beelzebub’s motives and inclinations, so unlike those of any of the other Demons Major, were never questioned. And his abilities were never challenged.

  Adramalik moved around the labyrinth of arteries within the city-sized fortress unerringly. Most of the buildings were completely submerged in the thick mantle of cold flesh that completely covered the upper surface of the fortress. He saw the outside only rarely, when on the uppermost tiers or when he was sent on some mission of state, but this was of little concern to him. Adramalik took his role as Chancellor General of the Order to heart, and he saw his surroundings only in the context of his lord’s needs. His Order served as bodyguard to the Fly, and they enjoyed privileges that were unheard of in Hell. In exchange they were his eyes and ears in Dis and the fortress.

  Beelzebub’s palace was a place of dark recesses and hidden culverts, a breeding ground of intrigue and apprehension that made Adramalik’s job that much more difficult—and interesting. The twisting halls were dim, constricted, and damp and were fashioned not of Hell’s customary soul-bricks but of enlarged veins and stretched arteries. These opened into small, stark, murky cells like the interiors of giant organs. Their floors were frequently pooled with fluids, and the furnishings, minimal and bleak, were often slick as well. The vast court, which navigated the fleshy tunnels murmuring among themselves, knew that these privations were the price they paid for the privilege of proximity to the Ruler of Hell.

  As he made his way toward the Fly’s Rotunda, Adramalik entered the Order’s quarters. The corridor emptied into a huge basilica-like interior with hundreds of doorways cut into the tegument of the walls. This was the Order’s barracks, a chamber within the Priory so deep inside the mountain of flesh that the unstirred air was thick and cool. As he passed room after room he could hear the muffled sounds of his Knights enjoying the pleasures of the court succubi. They deserve their entertainment. I use them like a knife, to flense away the layers of deceit. And like a knife, they need to be kept sharp edged.

  He smiled as he passed each closed door. A blazing sigil—each Knight’s personal emblem—floated outside the occupied rooms. Moans and sighs mixed with growls and short panting shrieks, not all the sounds of harmless release. The succubi knew how to please, whether it was through their pleasure or their willing pain.

  Adramalik, himself, rarely indulged. He could not afford to have any attachments to compromise his office, least of all the fire-laced loose lips of some highly placed, utterly tempting courtesan.

  He moved purposefully, crossing the barracks floor quickly. The floor was moist and dotted with random puddles of reddish liquid that flecked his long skin robes. The feared Chancellor of the Order splashed ingloriously toward the far rear exit, where he ascended a wide staircase and passed beneath a carved archway, the final threshold before the Rotunda’s narrowing artery.

  Beelzebub’s infamous domed Rotunda sat atop his fortress, embedded in the topmost folds of its rotting mantle. It was the single largest building in Hell, as much grown as it was built. Adramalik remembered standing on the foundation’s edge, the empty socket yawning, as the vast, archiorganic foundation had been laid and the dome had been blocked. A foul updraft continuously blew stinking air from the crater into his face and he would turn away frequently, gritting his teeth. He saw the first soul-bricks being conjured into place by Mulciber, Beelzebub’s architect-genius, the force behind this vast project. Adramalik remembered the endless lines of souls, kept in place by an army of winged Scourges, as they awaited their eternal fate. He could still hear their plaintive wailings as they were enfolded, layer by layer, into the great edifice. And he remembered how their cries had creased his master’s face with delight.

  Adramalik made his way down the final tubular corridor toward the Rotunda, stooping as he approached the clenched doorway. By design, no attack on his lord could possibly have been launched from such a position of forced supplication. Adramalik was nearly on his knees as he scribed in midair the fiery glyph that would gain him entry. It was ironic, he thought, that the most powerful demon in Hell should be thus approached. It spoke volumes about Beelzebub’s paranoia.

  As the sphincterlike door expanded, Adramalik saw the gathered demons only vaguely, distant and diffused by the dense atmosphere. The fires of their heads were bright sparks that flickered in the shifting skeins of airborne detritus. This was to be an Induction into the Order, an event as rare as it was important.

  He entered, stood up, and the door constricted behind him. The twilight of Beelzebub’s chamber took a moment to adjust to, and Adramalik tried to see whether any significant changes had been made to the vast, circular room. Eons of attendances had imbued him with a familiarity and practiced eye that missed very little.

  He was used to the suffocating closeness of the place but always thought it ironic that the largest building in Hell was also one of its most cramped. Few standing in the Rotunda’s center would have guessed at its monumentality. As he looked about, all looked as it should.

  Adramalik slowly made his way toward the gathered demons, careful not to trip over the chunks of raw-looking meat that floated in the ankle-deep puddles of blood. He was used to this as well. One had to get used to everything one saw in this chamber, he reflected, or one would go insane and find himself cast out naked upon the Wastes. He enjoyed watching demons from outside of Dis when they entered this chamber. They would look forward, never down, rarely up, and focus upon the distant, towering throne. Their eyes would adopt a haunted look, and their jaws would clench. Their loathing wa
s as clear as it was amusing to him, and their need to leave as quickly as possible was just as evident. No, he thought, those Outlander demons could never get used to this environment as he had. That always gave him a wonderful sense of pride.

  He stepped up to the gathered demons. There were about twenty of them—petitioners mostly—and Adramalik noted that not only was his lord not seated upon the throne but that the Prime Minister Agares, a great duke and personal advisor to Beelzebub, was also absent. What could he be doing that is more important than this? Adramalik looked at the gathered demons and then focused on the initiate.

  Adramalik knew everything about this fellow. Lord Agaliarept and he had left no stone unturned in their investigation of him. His had been a truly remarkable journey, beginning with an impact in Hell that put him far from every other demon who had landed. He had landed so far out on Hell’s fringe that, after wandering alone for millennia, he had taken up with the enigmatic Salamandrine Men. There he had learned to survive in the Wastes, to hunt Abyssals of all description, to adorn himself with their glowing stalks and pelts, and to use them as a native would. His weapons skills, which drew heavily on patterns and moves from the Waste dwellers’ craft, would be far beyond those of the other Knights. And he had a look to him that was intelligent and more than a little wild, due in part to a single, glowing Abyssal stalk that he’d thrust into his smooth skull. He was highly adaptable and had learned the ways of the court quickly and was quiet at the right times. Adramalik, who thought of him as something of a personal protege, knew that he would serve the Order well.

  Coinciding with Adramalik’s arrival, the gathered demons began to hear a faint buzzing that seemed to emanate from between the thousands of skins that hung from the domed ceiling. These skins hung from an intricate webwork of sinew, swaying as if caught in a gentle breeze, but no breeze, no cleansing balm, had ever filtered through the windowless chamber. The movement was created by the soul-skins themselves, rippling and contorting and trying futilely to free themselves from their captivity. Adramalik had sometimes come upon Beelzebub as he sat gazing up at their rustling dance and giggling softly, unaware that he was being watched.