to be Sargatanas’ last official duty and, as she watched the heavily armored figure begin to fill the air around and over Zoray’s form with line after line of fiery glyph-script, she began to formulate plans for the time when she would be alone.
For two weeks the Second Army of the Ascension swept across the gray fields of Hell with all of the incandescent savagery of a surging sheet of lava. Opposition during the long march had been minimal, but when small armies of the Fly had been chanced upon Hannibal had watched as Sargatanas’ legions had flowed over the enemy, the encounters barely slowing the advancing souls and demons. He had no time for the niceties of negotiation, nor did the enemy seek it. It was a time of change, and the Soul-General felt proud and honored to be a part of it. Finally, his eternity had some meaning.
The landscape outside of Adamantinarx was something largely unfamiliar to those souls who had not been in the first great battle, and even those veterans who had grown quiet when they passed the limits of familiar territories. Their march took them past the Flaming Cut, where they saw the great cairn, and on into the wards of the enemy, and Hannibal saw that the closer they drew to Dis the more hostile the terrain became. It seemed as if Beelzebub, creating a first line of defense, had imbued the very ground and peaks and blood-rivers with his own anger. No town or outpost had been left standing, a curious fact, Satanachia had remarked, in light of the Fly’s historical reluctance to let go of his territorial possessions.
Whenever the vanguard of the army approached the blasted remains of happened-upon outlying settlements, demon sappers were called forward and the rubble was immediately demolished. Any freed souls who were whole enough to spring unaided from the resulting piles of brick and who were not immediately amenable to joining the army were destroyed on the spot, but, Hannibal always noted, with little surprise and a thin smile, they were few.
When, eventually, there were more of Beelzebub’s wards behind them than in front, demons and souls alike saw the air ahead, heavy with haze, suffused with a red-gold lambency, and Satanachia informed his generals that, due to its location, the source of this effulgence was most probably the Keep.
A scouting party was sent forward and after a day came back to the gathered general staff with news of the city ahead. Or, more properly, with news that the capital, in its familiar form, was no longer and that most of its buildings, like those of Adamantinarx, were gone. In the brief weeks since the battle of the Flaming Cut, Beelzebub and his Architect General had not been idle. The Keep still stood, surrounded by its ring of lava, but its mountainous form was now encased in an immense and featureless wall. And waiting at its base was an army nearly equal in size to that of Sargatanas.
None of this was comforting news, and the generals’ silence reflected their inner misgivings. Hannibal, too, struggled to find something in the report that might point to a weakness in the Prince’s stratagem. Every advantage seemed to lie with the Fly. Only Satanachia seemed unaffected by the circumstances, and he did his best to bolster his staff.
On a high escarpment just outside Dis’ immediate outskirts, Put Satanachia sent the order aloft for Yen Wang’s Behemoths to form up in multiple wedges in the host’s front ranks. With this first battle order the Second Army of the Ascension would descend upon the vast plain that had once been Dis and, however the battle went, the fate of Hell itself would be decided.
She saw him from afar, from a window in the tallest turret left in his palace. Standing upon the high parade ground, he was a white figure in a sea of ranked deep-olive flyers. Eligor strode at his side, as did Barbatos, each, she imagined, receiving his last orders. The wind, furious and steady, whipped at them almost as if they were already aloft, and Sargatanas’ ivory flight skins flowed around him, billowing dramatically. The time had come and in moments he would be gone. Gone from Adamantinarx, gone from her existence. And soon, in all probability, gone from Hell.
Lilith turned away and walked back into her chamber, heading toward the area she had devoted to her sculpting. From the open window the sound of rank after rank of flying demons taking to the air suddenly filled the room, a loud roar of wings accompanied by a steady wind that rattled her sculpting tools on their small table. She would not stand by the window and watch him ascend into the clouds. She did not want the sight of him disappearing into the dark clouds to be burned into her memory.
Instead, she sat holding the large block of compressed Abyssal bone in her cold hands, turning it stiffly as if she were actually considering what to transform it into. She even picked up a tool just to convince herself that she was actually intent upon her new project. But as she lingered, scraper poised, she caught sight of the traveling skins, Ardat Lili’s skins, a corner of which peeked from beneath the flat, carved lid of a long chest. All of the possessions Lilith could carry from her life in Dis and her long journey away from the capital were within that chest, and she thought, with some pleasure, that, with the exception of her cherished tools, she had had no need of them since she had arrived in Adamantinarx; she had only to have hinted about any need and Sargatanas had provided it. Now she was not so sure that some of those items within the chest—the skins, the masks, the long dagger Agares had secreted in her bags—might not be useful yet again.
Lilith listened to the wind of the wings and when, after a very long time, it had subsided she placed the scraper and the untouched block back down on the table and rose. At the window again, she saw that the parade ground was empty, a dark and heavy cloud lowering to make it indistinct. As dark and indistinct, she thought, as her future now seemed.
Chapter Thirty
He had never flown so easily, so quickly, and with such a sense of purpose. The hot wind that Sargatanas had summoned weeks ago with characteristic forethought sped the multitude of winged demons toward Dis in half the time Eligor would have estimated. In only two days, and with only one mass landing, the combined flying forces of Sargatanas and Satanachia had covered nearly all of the ground between Adamantinarx and Dis.
As one of the two force commanders, Eligor flew well above the main flights. In an effort to remain unseen no sigil was lit, making the formations hard to see even for the sharp-eyed Captain. Sargatanas, his pale wings spread like fans, soared just above him issuing unobtrusive command-glyphs that the Guard Captain and Barbatos had to pass on with equal stealth to the lesser officers.
Looking down between the dense pyramidal flights of flyers, Eligor saw landmarks that he knew from his infrequent land journeys to the capital. Even from this altitude, he could see the myriad roads and paths that were obviously converging on the sprawling city from all points in the Prince’s empire. Along one of these, Eligor finally saw the rear guard of his lord’s army.
Sargatanas had waited until the two great land armies were engaged before leaving the palace with his flying troops. Far below, Eligor now began to see the orderly battle formations at the rear edge of the Second Army of the Ascension wheeling into position according to their generals’ needs. He knew that they were still very far from the front lines and he looked forward and, not seeing the distant battlefield, saw only the great glow that surrounded the Keep. As high as he was, the Black Dome atop the Keep reared higher and, for all of its size, he only saw it in fragmentary glimpses far ahead and behind the luminous clouds.
Sargatanas sent down a glyph ordering them to gain even more altitude. Strangely, the wind seemed to be dying down, and Eligor noticed that the air was not only thicker but also foul smelling. Whether by his lord’s presence or his design or by some protective counterinvocation of the Fly’s, the gale’s lessening would more easily facilitate their landing. They rose quickly on well-rested wings, entering a thick bank of red-tinged clouds and steering through the heavy, disorienting mists only on the strength of Sargatanas’ certainty.
