The good hand reached into a small pouch hung over a pointy hip and produced a curiously shaped glass, two bulbs, one above the other with a small constricted passage between and grains of sand slowly draining from top to bottom.
'This is time, hatchling. See it flow incessantly. In a continuous stream. Eons, eras, epochs, one after the other without seam, without division, apparently without start and finish. There is no first time, there is no last. There is only time and it is one.'
Astron retracted his membranes and stared at the figure before him. The awe for the surroundings gnawed at his resolve. 'Palodad?' he asked cautiously. 'Are you the devil, Palodad, the one who reckons?'
'I am indeed he.' The demon straightened his back slightly, his demeanor suddenly sober. 'And you no doubt are the messenger of some prince who cannot see his way out of a problem. This may be your first visit, but across the eons it is but one of countless others.'
'I come by the command of Prince Elezar,' Astron said. 'He strives against Gaspar of the lightning djinns for the right of supremacy.'
Palodad's good eye brightened. He put away the sandglass and looked over Astron far more carefully than he had before. 'Ah, Elezar, Elezar, the one who is golden,' he said slowly.
'Yes, and as you say, I come with a riddle that is in need of its key.'
'If Elezar cannot answer, then it must be a puzzle indeed,' Patodad said. 'I have advised him once before on matters of great weight. If this is of like proportion, then a mere fistful of iron will not suffice for payment.'
'Nevertheless, the answers the prince must know.'
Palodad grunted. For a long moment he stared un-blinkingly at Astron. Then he put away his glass and turned to hobble slowly back onto the spar. 'Come,' he called over his shoulder. 'Come and tell me what exactly perplexes the great Elezar so. I will elect to be flattered by his attention, even though it has been slow in coming. It certainly is about time he again has decided to ask for my aid.'
Palodad suddenly jerked to a halt and smiled. 'Yes, it is about time,' he repeated with a rasp. 'About time. It could be for nothing less.' He tilted his head back and opened his mouth into a great circle. His laugh filled the air and echoed from the wall. For a dozen cycles of the nearest lattice, the demon clutched his arms to his sides, rocking back and forth, oblivious to everything around him.
Then, as abruptly as he began, Palodad stopped and resumed his shuffle toward the bucket. 'I had instructed you to follow,' he called back as he entered the basket. 'Or did your prince send just an imp still afraid of its broodmother?'
Astron looked again into the interior of the sphere, at the bound and jerking sprites. He heard again the howls of pain and maledictions. The scene troubled him greatly, far more than any mystery in the realm of men. A reluctance coursed through his stembrain, putting stiffness into his limbs when he commanded them to move.
'I will remain untouched,' he muttered to himself. 'I need only stay until I have information for the prince,' With a pace no swifter than Palodad's he moved toward the waiting bucket.
CHAPTER THREE
ASTRON lost track of the number of pulley baskets he rode before he finally reached Palodad's destination, deep in the interior of the sphere. As the last bucket whisked from view, he found himself in an open-top box of stone as solid as the steps that had led to the entrance of the old demon's lair.
To his immediate left, in front of one of the four confining walls, a continuous belt moved on rollers and creaked off through a dark recess into the sphere beyond.
Directly in front stood a collection of glass jars, densely packed with swarms of swirling mites. Behind them were stacks of what looked like shallow baking sheets, some piled in precarious columns and others only two or three deep littering the floor. Through an archway in the distance, Astron saw a small devil brushing a sticky glue onto the surface of one of the sheets and adding it to another stack. A cloyingly sweet odor drifted from the glue and hung heavy in the air.
On the right, the wall was covered with tiny glow-sprites, each one crammed between the limbs of his neighbors, but somehow arrayed in precise lines. The small demons winked on and off with random bursts of light across the spectrum. All the colors of the rainbow stirred in motley patterns, each imp no larger than a thumbnail, but with thousands of neighbors producing a pulsating and almost hypnotic glitter.
'It is here that questions are composed,' Palodad said behind Astron. 'Here I affix the mites to the matrix and send the instructions to my minions who await beyond.'
'But to what purpose?' Astron turned and shook his head, unable to contain himself any longer. 'Why the million steps? How can so many submit to such an existence?'
'These are the questions of your prince?' Palodad asked.
'No, no, not these. His is much more profound.' Astron regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips. They revealed that Elezar's messenger was not totally unimpressed by what he saw and hinted therefore that Palodad's power might be the greater. The prince would not be pleased.
'But nevertheless I am a cataloguer,' Astron added quickly. 'It is my nature to ask so that I can observe and record.'
'A cataloguer. Indeed.' Palodad paused and squinted. 'No doubt the lack of wings and protruding fangs gives you greater satisfaction with your amusement.'
Astron turned away his eyes. Things were not starting well at all. 'I am, in fact, a splendorous djinn,' he said softly. 'At least my clutch brethren were. But I was hatched without wings and grew in stature no greater than you see me now.'
He hesitated a moment and looked back at Palodad. 'But no matter that I cannot weave great cataclysms or burst assunder condensed rock with the wave of my hand. I am a cataloguer and a good one. I filed my fangs myself so that the effect would be complete. With hood and cape I have passed among men, raising not a modicum of suspicion. And yes, I even managed the domination of a strong-willed one or two.'
'No doubt,' Palodad said. 'Even the smallest imp declares he has a few wizards under his spell.'
'What I say is true. I have no need to speak otherwise.'
'It does not matter.' Palodad waved the words aside. 'I have little use for the boasts of others in any case. The workings of my domain tell me far more of what has happened and what yet will come to pass.' He paused and stared at Astron. 'Perhaps, as a cataloguer, you might appreciate that more than the others. Tell me your name. We will see what I know of the followers of Elezar the prince.'
'It is Astron-Astron the one who walks.'
'Ah, Astron. It will be easy enough,' Palodad said, turning to pick up one of the metal sheets from the floor. 'Not thousands of syllables that record all of your exploits like some who have come.'
He placed the sheet on the belt and pulled a lever to stop it moving. Then he turned the lid on one of the jars at his feet, releasing a cloud of mites. Moving with a quickness that surprised Astron, the old demon began plucking the tiny imps from the air one by one and affixing them to the sticky surface of the sheet. With the metal ball in his other hand he smashed them flat so that they would stay. In what seemed like an instant he had immobilized several precise rows of mites, some with their heads aligned along the lines and others perpendicular to it.
Palodad surveyed his handiwork for a moment and then kicked the empty jar aside, waving the unused mites away. He hobbled back into the stacks behind them and returned a moment after with several more sheets, these already filled with imprisoned imps. He formed a chain of the trays on the belt. With one final grunt, he pulled the lever to start them moving toward the slit in the wall.
'Pay attention to the glowsprites,' Palodad said. 'It will take awhile for the framing instructions to be obeyed. After that the images will unfold quickly enough.'
Astron looked at the random dance of lights on the far wall. For a moment nothing happened; then suddenly the pattern changed. The glowsprites began pulsing in unison, creating bands of color that seemed to move across the wall. Kaleidoscopic shapes formed and dissolved; scenes of other parts of Palodad's lair exploded into sharp
