Adam looked to Adnihilo, to the spider, then back to his friend—a question, “Should we follow it?” to which the half-blood nodded. Terrified as he may be, what choice did they have? Make for the stairs miles away? And face the abyss again. He’d rather try his odds at fighting the demon, though Adnihilo doubted their weapons could harm it. Even if they could, he thought, searching and finding Paimon among the lowest in the mural legion, this monster is the least of what lies ahead.
“Come,” barked Lilum, “do not be afraid. These are the Father’s servants, the same as you, Adnihilo. And you, Adam.” She stared enchanting into the Messah’s eyes. “Remember why you’ve come.”
“For Magdalynn, and for my father,” the Messah said, though by his darkened mien, the pastor’s son might have uttered, ‘for death and an end to this torturous journey.’
He sheathed David’s rusted longsword, and the half-blood did the same with his sabre. It took the two together to rouse Ba’al from the ground. The bishop struggled at first, fumbling with his opium pipe, desperate for a light; but fighting his own short, violent breaths, the lamp slipped from his fingers, struck a pebble, shattered—his entire body cringed as if he’d been lashed. Then his limbs went limp as an infant’s. “Quickly, dammit,” was all he could manage before the next hacking fit set in, blood dripping from his lips as Adam and Adnihilo lifted him, his arms slung over their shoulders.
Paimon and Lilum waited just ahead. “I truly am honoured,” started the spider demon as soon as the others joined his march toward the petrified archway, “to be of service to the legate’s blood. That’s him up there, as he was during The Rebellion. It was all I could do to honour him.”
“You painted all this yourself?” asked Adam.
“After a thousand years of protest, test, testing the King, yes—him and Lord Astaroth—then another thousand years before it was finished. But for the legate, I’d do it all again. He took me in, like a father, you see. Taught me how to control my…temptations, even let me weave the banners for The Rebellion. Patches, he called me, because I stitched up so many cloths and tabards. You can call me that, too. Pa, Pa, Patches I mean. It’s only the centurion who calls me that anymore.”
Adnihilo glanced up at the mural. “Patches.”
“Yes?”
“That spider painted there, among the legions, is that one you?”
Paimon gasped, “You noticed! Why, yes, yes it is!”
“Then you actually knew him, my father?”
“Like a father, truly. I sup, suppose that makes us like brothers, doesn’t it?
“Would it be alright,” the half-blood hesitated, “would you mind if I asked you some questions about him?”
The spider chuckled. “Of course not! But I doubt there is anything I can tell you which he hasn’t told you himself.”
“I never got to know him, actually. He died before I was born.”
“Never knew him!” Paimon stopped at once; his body went stone still. “Why did no one tell me that you didn’t—I’m sorry. I, I can get emotional. Truly, you never met him even once?”
“I don’t even know him name.”
The demon turned, slowly, glaring unblinkingly with three jasper eyes. “They haven’t told you anything, have they? Nor me, it seems.” Paimon started again for the arch. “His name was Lucifer, first to discover the dark, dubbed Light Bringer by King Xanthos who blessed him with fire.”
“Why do they call him a traitor?”
For a second time, the spider froze. “Who dared claim the legate a traitor? Was it Seth? Mara? Mephistopheles? I swear on The Rebellion, I’ll rip their mortal hearts out and cast them into the lake of fire! They are the real traitors! Deserters! Renegades! They speak their own sins as if they were others’. No one, not us nor the King, have ever had cause to call the legate’s loyalty into question. He lived for The Rebellion, and he died like the other loyalist, fighting against our great nemesis.” He paused and sighed a high, airy breath. “My apologies, Heritor, for losing my temper. You’ve got too long a journey to waste time listening to an app, app, apprentice’s ramblings.”
Adnihilo glance sidelong at Lilum’s face—still as a mask, lips silent, ashen even for her ordinary complexion—and he wondered what other mistakes she had made. Not just her. Every interpretation, it seemed, was riddled with errors: intentions misread, motivations added, sometimes whole names and events are transposed or erased or changed in memory. Cain, David, Ba’al, and Lilum—was any one of them more right than the others? And what of the demon? Is his recollection to be thought more accurate? The half-blood doubted. What should I believe? Or do we just believe in what we’re taught? Or what we want to be true? He put the question to Paimon. “How do we know we can trust you?”
“‘Faith is that from which one conjures courage and strength.’ Your father’s words right before he, Dagon, and Mara crossed the abyss.”
In other words, we can’t.
“Is that where we’re going?” Adam asked. “Through the archway, I mean, and back up the stairs.”
“No, no. There is no need to risk traversing the abyss. Where we are going is below the ca, cathedral.”
“Cathedral?” Adnihilo said. There was nothing about this barren ground but glowing cracks and fuming vents.
“Yes,” answered Paimon. “Behold, the glory of all Pandemonium! Cathedral Nox!”
At once, the dead earth yawned its fiery maw, rumbled and roared; and three spires soared like black flames belched from the belly of a dragon. They were church towers, twins anterior, the black sheep steep and lonely at
