God's Demon

partially agape.

Andromalius regained himself and said, “Lord, you do not really think that engaging in a war such as you envision can—”

“I do,” Sargatanas said, his voice resonant. “It is naive to think that what transpires here is not being watched from Above. Would we miss an opportunity to watch Them if we could? What have we shown Them after these countless eons here in Hell? We have fulfilled every one of Their claims against us, proven ourselves to be anything but the angels we once were, and denied ourselves any consideration for return. We must show that after all of these grim millennia, after all the pain and punishment, we are capable of change. I am convinced that if our intentions and actions are clear—that our opposition to Beelzebub and his government is in earnest—They will take notice. And that is the first step to regaining our lost grace.”

Bifrons stood. He looked agitated. Eligor almost felt sorry for them. They had no choice but to go along with their patron, but they did not have to accept his precepts.

“You are talking about total war,” Bifrons said, shaking his spined head in disbelief, “a war that would engulf all of Hell. No demon would be able to remain neutral. And to what end?”

“No demon should remain neutral,” said Sargatanas acidly. “As to what end… the end of all this. And a beginning—the beginning of our Ascent.”

“You do not really think—”

“I do think and I do dream, but I do not really know, Bifrons. What I do know is that I cannot shake my memories. Nor, I suspect, can anyone else present.”

Without waiting for an answer, Sargatanas turned and put a steaming hand upon the door latch. “Yours has been a long and tiring journey and I will send you on to your chambers shortly. But first it is important for you to understand what lies beneath my decision.”

He opened the door and Eligor could only see darkness beyond.

“We are directly below the throne in the Audience Chamber,” said Sargatanas. “I had construction begin on this… shrine when I decided my course.”

The others followed him, a dark silhouette outlined in a scalloped tracery of steaming embers, into the narrow vestibule, and the only faint illumination was from their flickering heads. Eligor could see, between the shadows of their passing and then only dimly, pale walls covered with neat lines of incised angelic inscriptions. He found that provocative, curious. It was a small heresy to write in the old style; it was a much larger one to commit that writing to scone.

The walls fell away on either side as they entered a larger, circular room. The hollowness of their footsteps echoed through the unseen reaches, making the group sound larger than it was. Sargatanas uttered a word and suddenly the room was suffused in pale light. The dark, cloaked figures of the five demons contrasted starkly with the luminosity of the space. Eligor’s jaw dropped and

Valefar audibly released his breath, while the two visiting earls looked as if they might turn and run at any moment. All this Sargatanas measured as he stood back and watched the demons.

Eligor squinted, his eyes adjusting to the brightness. He took in the lambent room and realized that for all this to have been completed in such a short time—a matter of weeks—his lord must have driven Halphas and his laborers very hard. And then Eligor remembered the sounds of masons ringing through the long nights.

The joinery of the stones, their perfect dressing, and the care with which they were chosen all bespoke a level of craft that Eligor thought must have been augmented by an Art. Only the fairest, palest stones, laced with delicate veins of gold and silver, had been employed. The walls were punctuated at regular intervals with columned niches, each home, Eligor could discern, to a miraculous lifelike statue of a many-winged figure. The low-domed ceiling, hewn from an unimaginably huge pale-blue opal, flickered with flecks of inner fire, a perfect evocation, Eligor remembered, of the coruscating sky of the Above. Such a room, he knew, was not meant to exist in Hell.

But it was not the walls, nor the beautiful ceiling, nor even the heretical statuary that stirred the demons most. It was the running mosaics with tiles so small that Eligor could barely see them and the nearly floor-to-ceiling friezes and their incredible imagery that took the demons and wrenched them and pulled them in. And reminded them.

Each of the demons approached these shimmering murals and each walked slowly, silently, transfixed. Eligor found himself not looking at the friezes but into them, so rich was their execution, so vivid their portrayals. They began, at both sides of the room, with simple renderings of the Above, of the clear and glowing air, of the lambent clouds and the jeweled ground and the vast sparkling sea. And farther on, the great gold and crimson Tree of Life, heavy with its ripe, swollen fruit set amidst broad and sheltering leaves. Eligor saw, looking closely, the fabulous serpentine chalkadri flying through its boughs, their twelve wings picked out in rainbow jewels. He remembered their mellifluous calls and the Tree’s sweet fragrance and could not imagine how he might have forgotten them.

Eligor paused to look at his fellow demons. Thin wisps of steam, barely visible in the light, streamed from their eyes. The two earls had given them-selves over to the images and were breathlessly sidling along the walls, murmuring to themselves and each other. Valefar walked a few paces unsteadily, occasionally putting a tentative hand out upon the wall for support. And at the room’s center, standing by a raised altar and watching them all with his intent, silvered eyes, was the fallen seraph, a dark figure as immobile as the angelic statues that surrounded him.

Eligor turned back to the wall and saw the twelve radiant gates of the sun and the twelve pearlescent gates of the moon and the treasuries that housed the clouds and dew, the snow and the ice. There he saw the first depicted angels who guarded those storehouses, and it was a shock to see them, for he had tried very hard to forget their gracefulness.

Valefar, who was ahead of the other three demons, reached the farthest tableau, and something there that Eligor could not yet see caused him to cry out. He reeled backward, as if struck, nearly colliding with his lord. Sargatanas put out a hand and steadied his friend.

As if he were clinging to the side of a cliff with his hands, Eligor guided himself tentatively along the curving wall, examining its images, pausing to remember. The mosaic-bordered bas-reliefs showed more and more of the glittering hosts and their cities of light. Eligor knew what would follow: the ten greatest cities of creation, tiered like enormous steps upon the flank of the celestial mount, ascending toward the Throne.

These spired cities, crystalline and pure, filled with their multitudes of seraphim and cherubim, seemed, to his pained eyes, alive with the angels’ comings and goings. He was sure that he even recognized some of the angels, so great was the craft of the sculptors. In stone and jewels and metals the angels marched and sang and toiled, and as he looked at them Eligor recalled doing all of those things.

When he reached the foot of the Throne in all its soaring radiance he saw that it was surrounded by the six- winged archangels, swords in hand, singing praises as he had seen them do. The echoes of their celestial harmonies were so loud and the vision of them so real that he stumbled upon Andromalius, who, along with Bifrons, had reached the spot ahead of him. They were both upon their knees, gasping, hands outstretched against the wall. Eligor caught himself and, with pounding trepidation, looked upon the sublime Face of God. Its evocation was so glorious and terrible, so threatening and full of love, that he, too, exclaimed aloud. How did I forget? He found that he could not look away. Its beauty burned fiercely into his mind like a brand, like sparking iron—but not nearly as powerfully as when he had been in its presence so long ago. He could not control his shaking and, with steam blurring his vision, staggered away to where his lord and Valefar stood.

Sargatanas, his chest rising and falling, appeared moved by their reactions; Eligor heard his breath, deep and rhythmic like a bellows. He had not strayed from the room’s center, but in his hand, drawn from some hidden sheath, Eligor now saw a new-forged and unfamiliar sword, downward bent and vicious, wreathed in vapor and glyphs. A new sword—a Falcata—consecrated for a new war. Sargatanas held it up before him, and all of the demons’ eyes were drawn to it.

Looking at each of them in turn, the Demon Major said coldly, “Brothers, we will look upon that Face again.”

Chapter Fourteen