But the skyline was dominated by a monstrous black Worm-the exterior of the tunnel they had seen below, Dill realized. One end of it plunged into the ground a few hundred yards away from the walls of Hasp’s castle, yet it stretched to the far horizon.
Hasp said, “Menoa must have expended a great deal of power to send that Worm. We can only hope it takes time for him to recover.” He shook his head wearily. “I had hoped to move my castle and your chambers slowly beneath the earth, where we might remain undetected. But now, we must run. I’ll push this building as fast and as far as I can, but I fear it won’t be enough to reach the First Citadel. When that happens, you’ll need to get out and walk.”
The castle halted its ascent, shuddered again, and then began to move away across the surface of Hell.
Harper watched the archon’s castle burst from the bleeding ground and hover no more than twenty feet above the surrounding Middens. The canals had already begun to drain into the hole it had made. Meanwhile her Icarates remained underground, still caught inside the great black Worm.
When had she started to think of these warriors as her own? The thought repulsed her-Menoa’s Icarates had been the cause of her husband’s suffering, after all. But the threat of King Menoa’s rage at the loss of the angel spurred her into action. Through her sceptre, she planted a vision in the Worm’s collective mind, urging it to rise to the surface once more. The sheer force of King Menoa’s will had kept the Worm together, but it would not last much longer in this form. And loosing those demons that comprised its exoskeleton and teeth would provide her with an army.
Harper intended to pursue her quarry.
Judging by the size and grandeur of the castle, its occupant was a powerful angel, perhaps even Lord Hasp himself. Had the Lord of the First Citadel come to claim the young angel? It was possible, Harper conceded. It made no difference. No amount of will could carry that vast fortress far enough across the leagues of Hell. Free of the ground, the castle’s battlements and spires now towered over the Soul Middens, the maroon rock plated with thick iron on the lower walls, and occasionally festooned with glass. The pinnacles were capped by pointed roofs of deep blue slate. Flowering ivy veined its facades. Only the underside of the building was tattered where it had broken away from the souls below.
Blood fell like rain from those foundations and fell soundlessly into the huge pit below. The archon’s soul had already begun to die.
The stronghold hovered for a further moment, then moved away. Its heavy iron plates snagged against one slope of a Midden, and then it smashed through the dwellings and freed itself.
By now the Worm had extracted itself from the rendered foundations and laid its maw on level ground to expel the Icarates and their retinue of beasts and soul-cages.
Harper used her sceptre to plant another vision within the Worm’s many minds, one which would travel back to the Ninth Citadel itself. King Menoa would understand her plan, and hopefully sanction it. She envisioned the Worm breaking apart.
Evidence of the king’s approval came back at once, for the Worm burst apart into its component demons. A wave traveled from the horizon all the way to the Worm’s maw as countless numbers of the black scaly creatures untangled themselves from their neighbors and leapt clear. This was Menoa’s Legion of the Blind, the oldest and most primitive of his warrior clans. Long claws thrashing at the air and teeth clashing, the Blind dropped to the ground. Of a similar size, though varying in shape, each possessed between four and six skeletal limbs. A hard turtlelike shell protected their backs, and served to link them together, when necessary, to form a Phalanx or a Worm. They had no eyes of their own, but many clutched the Eyes of the Old Worm-the parasite monster Menoa had butchered three thousand years ago.
Legend told how he had discovered the creature in a deep burrow, feasting on unclaimed souls. He had persuaded the creature to ally with him by the simple offer of food. And then he had betrayed it. Now its eyes gave sight to the Legion of the Blind, while the Blind assumed the beast’s former shape to torment it.
King Menoa’s punishments often had no end.
The blind demons parted like a dark tide around Harper. Tens of thousands of them clambered over the Middens and across the walls between canals, or sloshed through the red mire. Some of them had not managed to extricate themselves from their neighbors and now walked in clusters of two or more, their shells still fused together.
But it was a considerable force. And fast, for the Blind moved surprisingly quickly. The perfect legion for hunting with.
The strain of his efforts pinched Hasp’s expression, and yet the Lord of the First Citadel demanded that Dill accompany him to the training sphere. “While you’re a resident in my soul,” he said, with a sweep of his hand to indicate the great flying stronghold around him, “you will abide by my rules. And that means learning to use battle- archon weapons. The short sword you know. But you must master the pike, rapier, bow, shield, spear, axe, and mace. Once you’ve learned those, I will teach you to use more exotic weapons.”
The god had gone on to explain that they would train inside Iril’s sphere so as to allow Dill to continue to fashion his own blades and armour. “Remember, any sword you attempt to manifest in this castle would be forged from
Dill had been wondering how his continued presence inside Hasp’s castle would affect the god. It was, after all, a parasitic relationship. Hasp provided the shelter and strength the young angel required for survival. The apple Dill had eaten was a manifest part of the god’s soul.
Mina remained insensate. She stood in the Banquet Hall, clutching her jewelry box. Hasp ignored her, but he put up with her presence here for Dill’s sake.
“I’m already sharing my fortress with an angel and his thirteen painted ghosts,” the god grumbled. “Another human soul makes little difference.”
Dill trained. Hasp taught him how to will weapons into existence. And then he taught Dill how to alter them mid-strike to surprise an enemy. A sword could be transformed into a spear, a bow into a shield. Dill learned how to shoot an arrow and how to change that arrow so that it veered during flight, or looped and circled a target before contact.
Combat in Hell had few rules.
When he wasn’t training, Dill spent his time with Mina. He talked about his former life in the temple, and all about Rachel and how she’d saved him from Hell once before. He even offered the girl food from Hasp’s table when the god wasn’t looking. But nothing roused her from her catatonia.
One day Hasp came into the Banquet Hall and frowned at them. “She ought to be a shade by now,” he remarked. “Human souls don’t last for long down here without their shells.”
Dill rubbed at the splinter of wood she had placed under his skin, but said nothing.
All this time Hasp kept his castle floating across the Maze. Sometimes Dill took the elevator up to the glass house at the top of the fortress from where he could gaze out across the landscape. The Maze was endless, scarred with canals and stippled with Middens. Very occasionally Dill spied an unusual black structure in the distance-like the bones of some alien temple or monolith. He asked Hasp what these were.
“We don’t know,” the god conceded. “They’ve been here in Hell since long before we archons arrived. The Icarates use them for some purpose, places of pilgrimage perhaps. Occasionally the temples simply disappear. They may simply be the dreams of ghosts.”
The skies darkened after dusk and grew brighter with the dawn, but each night lasted a different span of time. Some nights seemed to pass in mere moments, while others dragged on for much longer. No pattern regulated the ebb and flow of light in this place.
“It is Hell’s heartbeat,” Hasp said. “A result of the conflicting expectations of a hundred billion souls. Time runs at many speeds in the Maze-it is constantly in dispute.” He grimaced and rubbed his temples, then gave a deep sigh. “Lots of things have changed here since Iril was shattered. We are in a constant state of war.”
Hasp had been showing more evident signs of strain. His skin had become grey and slack, his shoulders stooped, and he moved with the weariness of an old man. Even his armour had dulled and rusted. Often the god stood in the glass house for hours, brooding, and staring back along the castle’s wake. A dark smudge covered the landscape there, like an encroaching sea of tar. When Dill pointed it out, Hasp shrugged and refused to comment. Instead he ordered Dill back down to the sphere for combat training.
