Chapter Nine
Eligor’s spirits sank with every step he took. He, Sargatanas, and Valefar had landed before the Western Gate—the so-called Porta Viscera—and stood, for a moment, at its foot. It, like its four counterparts, was an angular edifice reaching up five hundred feet, constructed of slate-gray native-stone towers, each linked by broad, blank walls. Imposing as they were, there was an additional feature upon its surface that made Eligor’s mouth open in amazement. Protruding from the stone, every foot or so, was an L-shaped iron spike, each adorned with withered, impaled human organs. Most were hearts—that most superfluous of organs in Hell—but there were other bits and pieces of forsaken human detritus. Entrails, sexual organs, even eyes decorated the walls, all buffeted in the stiff wind and giving the impression of a vertical carpet of moving life. Among these gruesome trophies scuttled a variety of small climbing Abyssals whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to pick at the remnants. As Sargatanas, Valefar, and Eligor passed under the gate’s arch, he watched as waves of the many-legged creatures ebbed and flowed across the wall’s surface, plucking, pinching, and tugging on the shredded flesh. As they passed beneath the gate’s arch, fragments skittered down the wall narrowly missing them, clumping in the wide passageway only to be swept up by attendant souls.
They exited the gate onto the broad Avenue of the Nine Hierarchies that dipped down a few miles distant, offering a wide, panoramic vista of the ancient city. Valefar led the small party’s progress, guiding them around the foul detritus that littered the streets. Everywhere, in sharp contrast to Adamantinarx, lay bones and discarded chunks of humanity. These were wrestled over by the wrist-thick worms that slithered through the back alleys and boldly emerged from the gloom when food appeared. Once found, a meal was hotly contested, and hundreds of the hook-headed creatures converged, twisting and coiling among themselves for even a tiny morsel. Any soul caught in this frenzy was reduced very quickly to even more morsels; most knew to shrink into the shadows. Eligor, who was used to Abyssals of every description, was repelled by these, intentionally crushing many under his bony foot when he had an opportunity.
The city’s chaotic sprawl reached to the distant horizon, where it faded into the smoky haze that hung low in the air. Only the twinkling fires and the columns of smoke in the far distance belied the true extent of Dis’ margins. It was a vast city, many times the size of Adamantinarx, with many times the population. From his vantage point he could easily see a dozen or more huge personal glyphs hanging above various city-sections, indicators of entire large neighborhoods governed by powerful deputy-mayors within Dis.
BEELZEBUB’S KEEP{8}At its center, dominating the Plain of Dis, was Beelzebub’s Keep, a structure nearly two miles high that looked all the more lofty for the flatness of the surrounding terrain. Mulciber’s Miracle, some called it. Eligor thought it the perfect symbol of its owner—overblown beyond any reality. It rose improbably toward the cloudy sky, an archiorganic mountain, polyhedral in plan with each side slanting, flat, and smooth save for the gigantic sustaining organs that broke the surfaces. The thick, heavy mantle of flesh on its upper surface was cleft by numerous black spires and domes, one of which, far to the right of the famed Rotunda dome—the Black Dome—was alight. Piercing its narrowest section was an immense arch through which flowed a lava stream—part of the glowing moat that encircled the entire artificial mount. At the base of that arch was the great portal that led into the Keep from a single gargantuan bridge. Eligor knew from the past that this was their immediate destination. Once there they were to be met by one of Prime Minister Agares’ secretaries, who would guide them through the vertical labyrinth that was the Keep’s interior.
Eligor trod heavily through the streets. He wondered, hopefully, when Sargatanas would tire of the endless rows of sullen buildings, when they would again take wing and truncate the unpleasant journey to the base of the citadel. Both of his companions were silent, each bearing an expression of distaste, Eligor suspected, for their surroundings.
Valefar guessed his line of thought. “When I left here,” he offered, “I wished I would never return. And now I am back, wishing precisely the same thing. Perhaps, in the future, I should wish for the opposite and see what hap-pens.” He laughed, but Eligor felt the strain. He knew, from experience, not to ask the Prime Minister under what circumstances he had left Dis. No one, with the possible exception of his lord, knew that story.
Eligor nodded. He, too, had made a similar wish. “Will the Prince recognize you?”
“I was never important enough for him to know of when I was here. I doubt that he would.”
“Just as well,” Eligor said with conviction.
The buildings on the city’s edge were low, leaning, and dried-blood red. Created eons ago from slabbed and chunked souls, topped by ruffling tufts of hair, they looked hollow eyed with their gaping windows. Half-attached souls protruding from walls or roofs flailed their arms spastically as the demons passed, uttering garbled sounds from afflicted throats. While Adamantinarx’s single-soul buildings were used for the same purposes, as solitary places of punishment, their equivalents in Dis were almost primitive in their crudity; they were considerably older and built in a time when the process was not yet perfected. Eligor recognized the various forms of the dwellings, noting that they reflected the earliest types of buildings that humanity had constructed.
He looked into a few open windows as they passed. The buildings’ inhabitants, melded to wall or floor in their personal punishments, were not too dissimilar from their counterparts in his own city. These were the unusually corrupt and depraved, those who deserved special attention. Seated, standing, or hanging, they rolled their eyes frantically, silently, the racking pain obvious in their minimal movements. That much, he thought, was familiar. But that familiarity brought him little comfort.
As the party descended toward the distant Keep, the avenue grew more populous. Souls kept mostly to the sides, huddled against the buildings. Small contingents of Beelzebub’s troops passed them, and even though Sargatanas was an obvious, imposing presence, the soldiers never once acknowledged him. Instead they respectfully gave him wide berth, eyes averted. This was the way of the capital, a city so much under the heel of the Prince of Hell that obeisance to any other Demon Major might be construed as disloyalty.
Only a squadron of Order Knights, swathed in scarlet-dyed skin, looked directly at the trio, and Eligor could feel something—was it arrogance?— pouring from their hidden eyes.
Suddenly a piercing wail rent the sky, an ululating scream so anguished that Eligor stiffened when he heard it.
Valefar turned back and wordlessly grinned at him even while the prolonged sound continued. It was a reassuring gesture, but Eligor remained wide-eyed. He had been to Dis many times but had never gotten used to the unpredictable Cry of Semjaza. According to common knowledge, this giant Watcher, whom few had ever seen, was one of only a very few survivors of a Fall that predated the War. Like its brethren it was flung down into Hell and shackled so as never to rise again. The anguish of Semjaza, imprisoned deep beneath the Keep, was extreme, its torment unending. Days, weeks, or years might pass without a sound emanating from its hidden chamber, but when Semjaza did give voice all of Dis reverberated.
Sargatanas strode on, outwardly oblivious to all around him. But the small bone plates of his face were ceaselessly shifting, agitated and angry.
“By now, my friends, you must be wondering why we walk these streets rather than take wing.” He paused. “It serves to remind me. Hell is punishment. Punishment is why we are here. Ours and theirs,” he said, nodding toward some souls. “But I see no reason to surround myself with filth and decay in Adamantinarx. We are on foot because we three must remember the differences between our own city and nearly every other city in Hell. Especially this city. Too many centuries have passed since we were last here. I, for one, had lost touch with the place, with its character. That character is a reflection of the demons in charge. It says as much about them as it does about us.”
Valefar suddenly looked puzzled. “Does it, my lord? I ask because I do think, after all these centuries, Eligor is warming to this place. Just last month he told me that he missed his trips here. He said that he really could not wait to come back.”
Eligor’s mouth opened.
“Perhaps we should make this an annual pilgrimage then, eh, Eligor?” Sargatanas said earnestly.
Eligor was so surprised that the most he could do was vehemently shake his head. Sargatanas and Valefar looked at each other and smiled.
