'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.
Long ago, Eligor, curious as always, had accompanied one such decorated decurion, had seen him expertly select just the right spot, where he cast the fiery glyph high into the ashy air and watched it plunge into the bubbling lava. Almost immediately, Eligor had marveled, the tips of halberds, the spikes of helmets, and the fingers of reaching hands broke the surface, parting the slowly swirling, incandescent flow of the lava. He had never forgotten the thrill of watching a battle-ready legion pull themselves from the very stuff of Hell, opening their eyes for the first time and lining up by the hundreds before him, steaming and tempering as they cooled. All this, Sargatanas had told him, was happening even as they entered the city.
The soul-beasts' lumbering progress was steady through the congested streets. Carrying Sargatanas' sigil- topped vertical banners before them, the Foot Guard and Scourges pushed through the milling souls, Overseers, municipal street-worm hunters, legionaries, and officials, widening a broad path for the three mounted demons.
Halfway to the center mount, Sargatanas had the other beasts draw up next to him and stop.
'Before we rest, I would visit the site of the ridiculous statue Beelzebub insisted be built. From here I can see that it is very nearly finished.'
And, indeed, when Eligor peered into the cloudy distance he, too, could see the dark head of a colossal statue. The three demons turned their beasts, following the redirected troops down a long, gradually descending street toward the work site.
DIS
Adramalik followed Prime Minister Agares along a narrow dim corridor, like the fleshy, dank inside of a worm, that sank sharply beneath the Prince's Rotunda. They were nearly as powerful as each other in their own spheres, nearly as influential, and their mutual suspicions kept them silent as they walked, a not uncommon occurrence when the two were together. Adramalik distrusted the Prime Minister, and in the paranoid world of the Keep distrust kept demons alive.
The corridor terminated into the entrance to Lord Agaliarept's Conjuring Chamber. Beelzebub had ordered them to attend him here, and, having no other choice, they dutifully agreed. If anything bound the two demons together, it was their sense of incomprehension and distaste for the Prince's Conjuror General. Sequestered deep beneath his master's Rotunda, he never left his circular chamber, never interacted with other demons until they visited him, and never spoke unless it was in the course of a conjuring. His was an obsessive world of ancient spells, muttered incantations, and bricks. In many ways, bricks were Agaliarept's primary focus, for it was through the combined and varying energies of specially selected bricks—souls of particular darkness— and through their kinship with other bricks throughout Hell that his powers played out. Endless deliveries of bricks, sought and found across Hell, made their way to his chamber and found themselves stacked everywhere.
Agares and Adramalik entered the wide kettledrum-shaped chamber and were immediately confronted with the sight of a thousand soul-bricks floating through a shredded mist at various heights. They moved in ceaseless
