Wayne Barlowe: God's Demon

His eyes fell upon his pack and he went to it and, kneeling, emptied it out upon the floor. A large object, heavily wrapped, tumbled out with a dull thud and he began to tug at its wrappings until it came free. He started to reach for it with his old hand but changed his mind in midstream. It was too heavy to pick up with that weaker limb and he corrected himself, grasping it with his new hand by its thick handle and lifting it easily to eye level. The Hook looked right in this place, its ten diamond-edged points gleaming menacingly in the low light. Catching a glimpse of the troughs, Hannibal nodded to himself and carried the weapon to them. With some difficulty, he placed it into one of the deep troughs and stood back. It fit perfectly, but something was wrong. He looked at the runnels and frowned; that was a mystery he would have to work out.

Exhaustion finally overtook him and he reclined upon a ledge. As he closed his eyes he thought about Div and La and the other souls he had once known in his existence as a slave and reflected on his amazing rise. It had all been his doing; no one else had been ambitious enough to attempt what he had done; he owed no one. But best of all, in his new chambers, he knew he was where he should be. And he was, for the time being, content.

The little tools were much too delicate and easily lost to be brought in her packs; they would have to be left behind for when she returned. When I return. That is a very odd thought. How many millennia will I be away? I have no idea, nor do I have any true notion of where I’m going. She put the tiny chisel down on the table, alongside its fellow tools. Lilith wondered, as she had for weeks, whether her departure from Adamantinarx was madness, whether her goals were as unclear as they seemed. She only knew that, with Sargatanas gone, she had no real reason to remain in a half-destroyed city. As the region’s new governor, Satanachia, was more than capable of administering to the rebuilding process. Someday, when she returned, she would find a beautiful city where souls and demons lived together in some form of equality. That was the dream. Her dream.

She would head out toward the Margins, bringing her tenets of hope to those souls in the smaller, remote cities who knew nothing of the rebellion. She knew that it was a dangerous mission, but she thought that, for the time being, it would take her mind off recent events. She was not bitter, simply tired, and the traveling might rehabilitate her. Hell was an unpredictable place, and as resourceful as she was, she would face its many hazards as a challenge. But she would not be completely unprepared.

She slid the long lid from a plain silver case that Eligor had brought to her and saw, lying upon the finest, iridescent Abyssal skin, Sargatanas’ sword, Lukiftias-pe-Ripesol. The tempering that had brought its souls together was impossible to break, and so a sword it would stay. In Sargatanas’ hand it had been light and deadly, but in hers it would be a two-handed weapon. While she was not so proficient in the Art Martial—what little she knew she had learned had been with Sargatanas—Lilith was comforted just knowing that it was coming with her. And she suspected there would be more than ample opportunity to work on the craft in the Wastes. She kept the sword wrapped in its skins and tied it to the outside of her pack, easily accessible but not obvious.

A rustling in the next room brought a smile to her face. The miracle of Sargatanas’ Passage had brought Ardat back to Lilith, and there was nothing short of destruction that would separate them ever again. Ardat appeared in the doorway wearing the skins Lilith had once worn, and her heart was filled with warmth for the handmaiden. It seemed Lilith’s world never stopped changing around her.

“Mistress, I have prepared your skins. Are you finished here?”

Lilith looked around her chambers, making sure everything was in order; she did not want to unseal them when she returned and find them in disarray. Her eyes fell back upon her small worktable and the two figures that stood upon it. One was the small bone figurine of herself, taken from the dome by Eligor. It was relatively crude—an example of her earliest work, executed before she had found her voice as a sculptor. Next to it was a piece she had only just finished, a representation of Sargatanas fashioned of many pieces of the purest white Abyssal bone that she had begun back in Dis. It was intricate and yet strong, a work of subtlety, grace, and power reflecting, she thought, all of his attributes, and she regarded it as her very best sculpture. Originally, she had planned to keep them together, but on impulse she picked them up, carefully wound a scrap of skin around them, and placed them in an outside pocket of her pack. She hoped Eligor would like them.

“Yes, Ardat, I am.”

When he put his quill down it was atop a large stack of neatly arranged leaves of parchment. It had taken him over two full cycles of Algol’s transit to complete his reminiscences, two cycles in which he had wandered far to collect the fullest accounts of the events surrounding Sargatanas’ Rebellion.

In that time, the palace, the city’s focal point and arguably most unharmed building in Adamantinarx, had been tirelessly repaired. No longer was it open to the tempests of Hell; no longer could he so easily hear the murmurings of passing demons through holes in the walls. He could hear the hammers of artisans—demon and soul alike—as they brought the wounded friezes back to life. Even now, he could see the barges heavy with native stone as they docked, manned by souls who wanted to work rather than had to. It was a new time in Hell.

The Rebellion was over and yet it continued on in its new reforms. While he was aware of the changes in those wards and cities that had been closest to the battles and survived, he also knew that there were many regions as yet unaffected. This, he thought, would take time. Already there were some who did not fully understand Sargatanas’ gift, who thought to simply take up arms and indiscriminately rid Hell of their own concept of evil. Theirs would be a long path.

As he thought of these changes, he also thought of Lilith and wondered where she might be. Somewhere, wandering the distant Wastes, undoubtedly. He had watched her leave the city, watched her as she and her handmaiden had boarded a barge on the Acheron, and watched, too, as the ship had disappeared into the ashy distance. And on his ascent up the Rule and back to his chambers he had thought about his lord, Sargatanas. It had all begun, the discontent and the dream, at the massive statue that still stood not too far from where he climbed.

Eligor sighed and straightened the stack of parchment leaves, placing the beautiful statuette of Sargatanas and the cruder one of Lilith atop them and donning his cloaks, and left his chambers to descend through the palace and out onto the Rule. The avenue was growing more crowded each day with a steady flow of workers and artisans, but it was not yet as bustling as it had once been. While there were very few buildings left, he walked the Rule out of habit, not necessity; only the sidewalks remained and he could have easily walked a more direct route, but he liked to see the city’s progress. He stopped a few times to observe the foundations of some new buildings being laid by souls and demons alike, but, distracted, he focused on the giant cruciform statue and headed toward it. When the city was at its height there would have been no chance of seeing its relatively low base, but now, with few buildings standing, he could see it still survived, an anomalous soul-brick structure in a city now growing only with native stone. Why, he wondered, had it not been taken down?