She knew that if he was not alone the door would not keep them from her. With a shrug she opened the door, expecting it to burst inward with the weight of Agares’ accomplices.
The Prime Minister, Lilith saw, was alone. He entered, bowed, and, closing the door behind him, stood back. In his arms was a bundle of clothes.
“I have come to get you out of here,” he said with quiet urgency.
“Why?”
“Because the Prince grows tired of you. And I will not be able to serve him with you up there… up above the throne.”
Lilith looked at him with some disdain. “So this is about you, then? You would not be happy with me dangling above you for eternity, looking down upon you, as I most assuredly would.”
“I am sorry, Consort; that was not quite how I meant it. Yes, I would be disturbed. But to survive I must be able to serve him without any… ah, impediment. And while I have no love for the Prince or his ways, I do recognize him as our regent pro tem. Until, that is, Lucifer should ever return.”
Lilith turned from him. “The hope still burns, eh?”
“Yes, Consort, it does.”
“And, perhaps, if he does return… and I do survive, why then, whoever was instrumental in my survival…,” she said. She nodded, smiling faintly. “I think I understand.”
Agares held out the traveling skins.
“I will tell the Prince, when he next summons you, that you are ill, that you have asked not to be disturbed. Given his feelings toward you, at the moment, I think he will welcome that. For a while, at least. I have arranged for a caravan to escort you—incognito of course—to virtually anywhere in Hell that you choose. Your destination is your own affair and how you dispose of the demons of the caravan, too, is your own business; I do not want to know. That is my parting gift to you; if I should be found out to have helped you escape… well, I will not be able to betray you at my… last moments.”
“Very noble. I will try to remember that, if Lucifer should ever return.”
“Thank you.”
Lilith took the heavy, hooded garments that smelled faintly of smoke. Agares turned to leave.
“Just one thing, Prime Minister,” she said. “How did you know that I would not tell the Prince of your betrayal?”
“By chance, I saw your familiar fly away into the night. It really was nothing more than a coincidence that I happened to be on a balcony. I heard something and looked up. I knew the moment I saw it what it was and what it represented. A plea for help.”
“Answered by you,” she said with a tinge of irony. But she reconsidered and said, “Thank you, Prime Minister.”
He bowed slightly and left.
Lilith put the skins down and began to assemble some of her possessions from the scattered debris of her life in Dis.
The game of subterfuge was over. Hani zigzagged as quickly as he dared between the myriad pillars of the arcade, always heading, he hoped, toward the dome’s central chamber. The arcade, one of dozens radially arranged, was like an artificial gorge, narrow, with a fan-vaulted ceiling three hundred feet above and steep walls only occasionally interrupted by floor-level doorways. Fifty-foot columns, each bearing a lit sconce that faced the main passage, supported overhanging offices, and while the effect was airy, the fans of shadow they provided were welcome to Hani. He knew, though, that his discovery was only a matter of time.
Streams of legionaries filed through the stone forest of tall columns, pole arms upon their shoulders, the heavy scuffing of their bone-shod feet filling the space. They, too, were heading toward the great chamber, a fact that did nothing to comfort the soul but did convince him of his insanity. While they marched, without combat orders, they were not the real threat to his detection; their metallic eyes never seemed to stray from the soldier ahead of them. Hani knew that their heads were scooped, empty, and that they were nearly unable to think for themselves. But the centurions Hani watched carefully. Nearly ten feet tall, armored and wielding two sword hands, each proudly bore two upward-curving pectoral bars of flattened bone—prized signs of their rank. With experienced eyes ever gauging their surroundings, the centurions’ vigilance sharply contrasted with their soldiers’ indifference. Their battle-scarred faces bore the same two mouths—one for speaking, the other for feeding— that typified all lower demons, but, due to their rank, there was a slightly more refined quality to them. They were, the soul knew, imbued with a greater intelligence and, complimenting it, a greater sense of awareness. And they could, with a simple command-glyph, turn the mindless marching infantry into the irresistible tool of Hani’s destruction. He could not help but compare them to the Overseers that he was so used to obeying and knew that the military demons’ ferocity far outstripped them.
For all his care, he never saw the officer that raised the alarm, or the glyph that he knew, as he started to run, must have followed it. He only heard the echoing bark of command and the clatter of dozens of troops in the distance wheeling to pursue him.
The legionaries ran heavily in their tempered stone armor, and while they may have been comparatively fast upon the battlefield, they were gaining only slowly on Hani. For the first time in Hell, he ran, stretching his legs, stumbling a bit at first, but gaining in confidence as he raced between the columns.
Ten thousand lava-gray troops gathered in Sargatanas’ Audience Chamber and stood at attention before the central pyramidal dais. The air was hazy with the steam that arose from the gathered army. Each Demon Minor, accompanied by his senior officers, stood beside his gaudy standard-bearer. The effect of all of the massed vertical banners, topped as they were with their incandescent regimental glyphs, was like a shifting sea of lava, hardened gray and spangled with myriad specks of magma. The sound of kettledrums, arrayed around the chamber’s periphery, was muffled and distant, providing a marching cadence familiar to the entering legions.
Eligor, standing near his lord, looked on from his higher vantage upon the dais, taking in the spectacle of the massed troops. Great wedges of soldiers, each separated by broad aisles, faced him, the sea of officers and their newly risen troops motionless and attentive. Before him, Sargatanas waited, head lowered and aflame in a blazing coronet of leaping fire. The top of his head had broadened out to accommodate six lidless and staring eyes. He carried, unsheathed, the new sword, which, Eligor had found out, had been forged of some of the most powerful souls, folded countless times, beaten into shape and tempered, and then sharpened. A strong shaft of Algol’s light played down upon the dark blade, its shimmering red reflection briefly flashing upon Valefar and Eligor and Faraii, Bifrons, and Andromalius as they watched the last of the soldiers filter in. Finally the enormous room was filled.
Sargatanas, the focal point of thousands of eyes, raised his sword overhead and the drums grew silent. Glancing from side to side, he stepped forward until he stood at the top of the stairs, a dark, fiery figure, eyes intense with an inner fervor, flexing wing-stumps describing a vee. His sigil blossomed above his head, a full span across, a circular signet of fire.
“Demons Minor!” Sargatanas’ voice boomed out through the chamber. “Brothers in exile! You know what we lost so long ago and why you have been mobilized. For too long you and I have accepted our Fall, the terrible result of Lucifer’s flawed dreams and leadership. We have accepted, too, the laws that have been imposed upon us regarding how we are to govern in Hell. We have adapted to the worst imaginable conditions, and somehow… somehow we have thrived. But we have also paid a steep price for that adaptation… a price paid in the currency of our consciences. I need not tell you how staying true to our inner selves while doing our mandated duty has taxed us. I will not say that we were cast down here unjustly. But I will say that we have served here long enough… that we have paid for our transgression. Now I say… enough!”
Eligor saw him pause and saw, too, the effect his words were having on the assembled demons.
“What we are about to attempt is something that no one in Hell’s long history has ever dared. We are about to embark upon a journey of redemption and reawakening… a journey Heavenward… a journey Home!”
The gathered demons’ murmuring grew in volume.
