Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

drily.

The figure seemed to grow from the white smoke itself, becoming more solid and distinct as the clouds dissipated. Clad in pale skins, hood drawn up, it looked like little more than a common traveler.

'So this is my reward for my patience!' the figure said, its husky voice carrying easily. Eligor could not be sure, but he thought he recognized her accent, for surely it was a female beneath the swaths of Abyssal skin. Just as she climbed the last few steps of the pyramid and dropped her hood he remembered. Shaking out her thick, white hair, Lilith looked up at them and smiled. She dropped the skins in a twitching pile at her splayed feet. 'I thought I would melt away wearing these for so long indoors.'

Lilith stepped away from the robes and stood before them pale as bone. Clad simply, she exuded that same mixture of fragility and power, eroticism and fierceness, that Eligor had felt the first time he met her.

Sargatanas knelt, followed by the other demons around him. 'Consort Lilith—' he began.

'Consort no longer, my lord,' Lilith corrected, the words tinged with the barest trace of triumph. 'Rise, Sargatanas. I no longer hold any position of rank in Hell. My being here should tell you that.'

'Lilith,' the Demon Major said, once more standing. The others around him rose and, with bows, began to descend the flight of steps and cross the broad floor. 'I did not think you were ready yet to be out and about in Adamantinarx. When Valefar told me of your arrival I expected that you would want to remain hidden until the unrest with Dis was resolved.'

'True It does not yet know of my whereabouts, though It probably suspects the truth. If I may say, there is no point to my remaining in hiding, my lord. Your power and your disregard for Beelzebub's orders have made your case plain enough to Dis; the Fly's regard for you is already deeply questionable—'

'And will surely become more so when he discovers that you, his Consort, are residing within this city's walls.'

'Would you have me return, then? To Dis?'

'No, my lady, never. But I will have to impose serious, personal safeguards upon you.'

'Thank you, my lord.'

Eligor's eye met Valefar's; the Captain of the Flying Guard had lingered as much from the lack of his lord's orders as from his own fascination with Lilith. But now, with a meaningful nod from Valefar, Eligor turned and followed the Prime Minster as he began to descend the stairs. Valefar stooped and picked up Lilith's skins, folding them as he walked. Minutes later, at the entrance to the arcades, Eligor turned back and saw the two distant figures deep in conversation.

* * * * *

Lilith watched Sargatanas walk to the edge of the dais and sit down upon the pyramid's top step. His smoldering dark form contrasted sharply with the pale stones, the many ebon and red folds of his robes fanning out behind him. He seemed weary, cocking his head slightly as he looked at the distant, melted statue. 'Very impressive, that,' said Lilith.

'Yes,' the demon said diffidently after a pause. 'Just another tool for me to use against your former lord when the need arises. Please,' he said, beckoning Lilith to sit next to him. She sat and delicately arranged the folds of her long, sheathlike skirt.

Sargatanas turned away from the darkening chamber and looked at her for a moment without saying anything, studying her small movements. His carefully composed court face was expressionless, but Lilith thought she saw, implicit beneath the slowly sliding plates a mixture of emotions. Is it melancholia? As they regarded each other she saw his expression change, saw the plates cease moving, the tight set of his jaw lighten.

'So why did you leave Dis?' he said. 'And then come here?'

Lilith looked away and for an instant she imagined that her vision cut through the palace's stone walls, darting across the umber landscape all the way back to the Keep and her abandoned chambers. It was so odd that she would never see them again; she had spent so long within its confines. So long a prisoner.

'It's actually very simple, my lord. ... I cannot be ... owned. It is how I was made.'

'Cannot ... or will not?'

'Both.' The word hung in the air. 'When Lucifer passed on his scepter to Beelzebub, when I became a bargaining chip in the transaction between them, I felt hurt, disgusted, outraged. But after all those millennia with that thing, I felt scooped out, bereft of my ... self. The Fly took away nearly everything that I was. That is Its way. And then, after so very long, the tiny part of me that I kept locked away ... the part that could imagine the Light ... saw a possible way: the souls. If I could give them hope and nurture it, then maybe they could become themselves again and by weight of numbers overthrow the Fly. Perhaps it was naive, but I secretly began to send out my little statues, sowing them among the damned. They became my surrogates for freedom and salvation ... and revenge.'

He nodded gravely. 'That answers why. But not what made you come here.'

'I ... suffered a great loss.' She paused. There would be a time to tell him about Ardat, about just how much she meant to her, but not now. 'My lord, do you know what the demons in Dis call Adamantinarx? With slitted eyes and filled with hate they call it the 'City That Fell from Heaven.' Everyone there knows what it represents ... that it is the best that one can find in Hell. Everyone, too, knows of its lord and how he rules that city.'

Lilith knew well the other reason she had chosen Adamantinarx, knew that she could not yet tell him that she had seen in his infrequent visits to Dis something in him that had reminded her of another demon—her lost lord. Sargatanas bore many of the same irresistible qualities that had made Lucifer the force he was: the ambition, the idealism, the ferocity. And now she had seen yet another similar side, the self-flagellating remorse.

'From what I have heard,' he rumbled, 'they spit after they utter that. And not just because they say the word 'Heaven.' Everyone may know of Adamantinarx, but not everyone wants it to exist.'

'True, but I do. And I would call it home. I can never see Heaven; this is as close as I can come.'

'And just how did you make your journey? Valefar never told me.'

'Anonymously, alone, and upon the back of a beast. Prime Minister Agares had a hand in it. He is a strange