Lyndon Hardy - Riddle of the Seven Realms

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."

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.

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.