than an era ago. The great monotony did not yet dampen his will to live as it did for some of the others, who had sampled a dozen times over all that Elezar had to offer, others who would have to be goaded out of a jaded lethargy even to die. No, if and when they came for him, surrounding his slight body with stares and gloats, it would be far too soon.
Astron grimaced. If and when they came, he hoped that for once he would have the strength of his clutch brothers, strength to deny to Gaspar any satisfaction, strength to be able to look back with unblinking eyes and stand silent, even though they pulled away his fingers and toes one by one.
It was all because of arrogance, Astron thought. His prince had been too proud not to accept Gaspar's challenge on the terms with which it was given. Elezar should have denied the fairness of the riddle. But he was too concerned about what the other princes would think if he refused a test in which, after all, he was supposed to be the strongest of all.
The tunnel turned sharply to the left without warning, and Astron banged his head against a jutting overhang. His thoughts jangled back to his immediate concern. 'More than a million steps in total darkness,' he muttered. 'This Palodad constructs an approach of more than a million when a few hundred easily would do. Even a sublime devil guards his lair with only fifty. Fifty steps, though he might weave the essence of a rose.'
Astron rubbed the throb in his temple with one hand while he cautiously extended his other forward. 'There must be some truth to the accounts,' he said to himself. 'What sane demon would dare to be so wasteful? To squander his wealth on stride after stride of featureless rock when he could occupy himself for epochs building intricate sculptures instead.'
His question echoed unanswered down the dark tunnel and Astron paused a moment more, trying to will himself into placid composure. To approach in a state of visible apprehension would place him at an immediate disadvantage. He was, after all, the emissary of a prince. He squeezed his fists all the tighter and set a grim mask on his face. In silence, he trod the last ten thousand steps, not even bothering to count.
Finally he reached the entrance barrier and pulled it aside. The tunnel suddenly blazed with light. Translucent membranes flicked over his eyes as he stared into the brilliance. The drone of tiny wings mixed with the slur of countless curses, creating a din that assaulted even the most insensitive ears.
He saw the walls expand outward from where he stood to form a giant sphere, dotted with smaller globes of incandescence that banished all shadows from its interior. He stood on a ledge that circumnavigated this globe, a small pathway that gently curved and finally disappeared out of sight on both sides behind the massive constructions that filled the enclosed volume.
Directly in front, a causeway arched from the ledge to link with the nearest of the structures. The edifice looked like some gigantic gameboard, a collection of tightly packed cubical cells built of rusty iron spars with row upon row of repeated patterns forming an immense vertical plane. Thousands of cells were stacked into a single column, and thousands of columns ranked together from left to right.
Each cell was occupied by an imp, mostly rock gremlins with pale green skin, waited eyelids, and thick leathery wings. But here and there, Astron saw other types, waterwisps, smouldering fifenella, and pigmy afreets almost as tall as the span of his forearm.
Every imp, regardless of type, was collared with iron and linked with short pieces of chain to the lattice. The inhabitants of each row were joined together by lengths of rope that draped from cell to cell and looped around right wrists outstretched rigidly above slumbering heads. The end of each rope terminated on a separate shaft of steel at the edge of the lattice that ran to other constructions farther back in the sphere.
More cords dangled from shafts above each column, connecting the left wrists of the demons positioned in the same vertical line. Although all seemingly were asleep, about half had their mouths open and long dangling tongues oozed a drool onto those confined below.
As Astron watched, a shaft on the side suddenly twitched away from the lattice, joggling the arms of the row of gremlins to which it was connected. They all sprang alert. An instant later one of the rods on the top also lurched from its resting place, waking a column as well. Another moment passed with the aroused demons tensed and eyes open wide. Then, almost as quickly as they had wakened, they returned to their rest, facial expressions the same as they had been before. They all returned, that is, except for one, the one who had been common to both row and column, the one who had had both arms tugged.
The selected imp waited restlessly until another gremlin, free-flying and unfettered, buzzed into view to position itself in front of the lattice.
'Bad news, mintbreath. It's a tongueout,' the newcomer squeaked. 'And from the way things are cycling, I doubt another change will come for an eon or so.'
'Gimme a break,' the awakened imp answered. 'I'm way ahead on tongueouts. I had to drool for over an eon just a few cycles ago. My jaw still aches from the effort. And I can remember my state in my head just as well as you. Wake me in an era and I will still recall whether I had been set to be in or out.'
'Tongueout,' the hovering gremlin insisted. 'Or do you want me to report you stuck? If the upkeep crew replaces you, then you will be sent to the register pit. At least here you get to sleep most of the time.'
The imp in the lattice grimaced and then finally spat out its tongue at the messenger. With a growl he pitched his head forward on his chest, letting his body dangle from its fetters. The fluttering gremlin then flew away just before another tug on the rods aroused a fifenella and the cycle started again.
Astron shifted his attention to other lattices nearby the first. Some were identical in construction, giant arrays of sleeping imps. In others, tall columns of sprites were bound spread-eagled with a limb stretched tight toward each corner of its cell and the fetters running from the leg of one to the arm of another. In spasmodic waves the demons twitched and shuddered, jiggling the left leg if only one arm were tugged and the right if both were stretched instead.
In yet other cages, mighty djinns flipped from being erect to standing on their heads in response to the jabs and pokes of their neighbors next in line. Back into the recesses of the cavern the jumble of imprisoned demons filled the span of the eye, islands of symmetry joined in a chaotic web of lines, shafts, and darting imps. All of it was alive with jerk and tug, great rolling waves of activity that coursed and pulsed in patterns that could not quite be followed.
Astron's mind whirled. He had been prepared for strangeness. If nothing else, his many trips into the worlds of men had accustomed him to the unusual. But the expanse was too great. Never before in his own realm had he seen so much matter concentrated in one place. Countless numbers of fetters and chains, cell placed upon cell, lattice after lattice, receding into the distance. Elezar was reputed to be among the richest of the princes, but all his fanciful domes would be lost among the massive constructs in the sphere.
'With no matter for payment? One dares to come with no matter?' A raspy voice sounded over the noise.
Astron looked upward and saw a platform that jutted from the wall of the sphere some hundred spans above where he stood. Descending from it in a rope-hung bucket was a demon of about his size although certainly not his shape and form.
The posture stooped; a long curved neck cantilevered from the deep valley between bony shoulders. The scales of the face were cracked and peeling. Near the gnarled ears, some scales were missing altogether, revealing a pulsing underlayer that quivered like freshly flayed flesh. Eyes squinted out from grimy hollows, one rheumy with phlegm and the other jerking in erratic directions, independent of its mate. Emaciated arms terminated in three-clawed hands, one wrapped permanently about a crystal of some polished metal, the webbing between the fingers spread like a threadbare cape over the gleaming surface.
'And no wings as well, I see,' the voice continued as the basket descended to eye level. 'Quite presumptuous to come without wings to get you from here to there.'
Astron stared at the demon as it slowly swung a spar from the basket over to the ledge and hobbled across. 'I am unfamiliar with the tradition of this domain,' he said slowly to the advancing figure. 'This is the first time I have come. I act upon the request and demand of my-'
'What did you say?' The demon cupped his free hand behind his ear. 'This is the first what?'
'The first time,' Astron repeated. 'The first time that-'
The rest of his words were drowned in sudden laughter. The approaching demon tilted back his head and boomed with a repetitious grate, each rasp more dissonant than the last. Astron opened his mouth to speak again, but then thought better of it, waiting instead for the other finally to lapse back into silence.
'Time,' the demon repeated with his last rasp. 'Not only time but the first time. Here, hatchling, look at this.'
