Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

consequences would be of such a flagrant security breach.

* * * * *

Pain and terror and a sudden sinking feeling of disappointment filled Hani as he felt himself jerked into the air. He was used to pain and almost welcomed it. Its infliction meant, at least, that all of the questions—how his quest would end—were answered. It had been an amazing journey, the journey, as it turned out, toward the end of his conventional existence. For surely his punishment would be unthinkable. But still, he had gotten as far as he had hoped. Farther than he dreamt. Even now, twisting in numbing pain at the end of a dozen hooked chains, he was sure that he saw in the distance his true goal, the large form of Sargatanas as he walked amidst his troops.

Above Hani, the six flying demons were dipping and rising, expertly keeping their chains taut. The barbed hooks were deeply embedded all over his body and he finally gave up struggling. What really was the point? If he fell, it would only be atop a waiting legionary's halberd.

He saw the ranks of legionaries looking up at him, expressionless; they were weapons to be wielded, mindless and dangerous. He saw them in an agonized blur, each nearly identical to its brother, focusing only upon a face, or a scooped-out cranium, or a thick carapace with its distinctive chest-horns. They were all alike, all cruel and efficient.

They flew on toward the central flat-topped mountain of stone. He saw a great throne atop it. At its foot he saw the nearing dark figure of the Lord of Adamantinarx staring up at him, unmoving, waiting, and fear added itself to the pain that bled through his limp body.

Through tear-veiled eyes he saw the figure grow larger as the flying demons dropped down. He saw the coronal eyes encircled by flame and then, beneath them, the intense, metallic eyes that reached up toward him with a penetrating intensity. A few moments later he was hanging mere feet from Sargatanas, dangled like a lifeless puppet by the hovering demons.

Hani hung there, transfixed by the eight eyes of the demon, convinced, in his delirium of pain, that they were what held him aloft rather than the chains. The gigantic chamber dimmed and swirled and blazed before him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, but each time he opened his eyes the demon's were always, unblinkingly, upon him. Was it for seconds or minutes? Time, as he perceived it, could only be marked by the uneven rhythm of pain, the artificial night and day of his tenuous awareness.

'Why are you here, larva?' Hani heard, and his eyelids fluttered open.

'I sinned,' he said foggily.

'Why are you here before me?' the rumbling accented voice said.

'I had to come,' he said, his voice cinder dry. 'I have something ... you would value.'

He saw a demon step forward and, because the memory was still so sharp, remembered that he was named Valefar.

'Lord, there is nothing this larva can offer us. Shall I have it dispo—'

'No, Valefar. You do not find it remarkable that this soul is here ... now? I cannot remember this ever happening before. And that, alone, interests me.'

Hani saw Sargatanas turn back to him.

'What do you want from us ... from me?'

And even through his haze of agony Hani realized that this was his opportunity, the opportunity.

'I want only to know who I was. And what I did to get here.'

Sargatanas stared at him, cocking his head slightly to one side. Hani saw the demon close his many eyes, saw the flames about his head gutter, and saw, too, the very slight trembling of one clawed finger.

And then Hani felt it. It began as a sharp, hot breeze upon his mind, strong and persistent, and gathered quickly into a rushing, searing gale that surpassed the hottest winds he could remember, the roaring Tophet blasts from the child-sacrifices in his home city.

He shut his eyes and the memories of his Life began to cascade back into him like the most precious, sweetest wine being poured into an amphora. He knew then that the bits of memory that he had experienced in Hell had been like some barely fragrant residue clinging to the inside of his mind, the stubborn dregs that been left in a vessel when it was emptied.

The fleeting images of a wide, sun-kissed sea had been the Central Sea, the huge wall-encircled city his beloved Qart Hadasht—the New City—and he knew now that the soul-beasts had evoked nothing less than his prized war elephants. Had he not made this fateful journey he could have wrestled with those images' meaning for all eternity.

Hani opened his eyes, but he was Hani no longer. And he was no longer hanging by the hooks. Instead he was lying upon the warm flagstones, the six flying demons behind with their lances tipped toward him. Sargatanas was watching him carefully, as were the five attending demons.

'Your name was Hannibal, son of Hamilcar of the House of Barca. Does that mean anything to you?'

'Yes ... everything.'

'You were, among your kind, quite remarkable; your hatred ran deeper than most,' the demon said.

'I had much to hate.'

Sargatanas appeared not to have heard him. 'What is it that you bring to me?'

And in that moment, with the awareness of his past achieved, the plan that had begun with the small statue became something else.

'I know that a great war is imminent,' said, rubbing the puncture-wounds on his shoulders. The pain was still enormous. 'I can give you an army. An army of souls.'

HANNIBAL AND HIS ARMY