Adramalik thought, from where he stood, that he saw Lilith wince when her name was pronounced.
"I have heard rumors, but nothing more, my Prince," she said, still looking down. Her voice was strong, husky. And not particularly contrite.
"You are mine, Consort. Not Hell's at large. I would find it most distressing if Fleurety's tales about you proved true. He is convinced that you are, in some way, fostering these cults. Just as you once did with the living humans."
"The Duke has his own designs, my Prince," she said plainly. "Perhaps you might ask him why he takes any interest in me at all."
"I have. For once, his suspicions outweigh his obvious urges toward you."
The Chancellor General reflected on that with mild amusement. Duke Fleurety's carnal interests were extraordinary, his imagination nearly unmatched, his resources boundless. He must be very sure indeed, thought Adramalik.
Lilith tilted her head up.
"He suggested that I have Lord Agaliarept minister to you—that, perhaps, only he is capable of gaining the truth from you. I found that suggestion ... disagreeable. What are your feelings about this?"
That had an effect, thought Adramalik, pleased. Her slight movement backward had been unmistakable. She was too proud, too unaffected by the Prince's presence.
Ten thousand faceted eyes were fixed upon her.
"My feelings?" Her voice broke ever so slightly. "I ... I have done nothing." Adramalik saw a tear well up and glisten down her ivory cheek. It stopped for a moment on her jaw and then dropped onto her clawed foot where a few black and green flies had gathered. One sizzled briefly from the moisture and vanished, and Adramalik could not be sure that he had heard a momentary sigh mingled with the low buzz of Beelzebub's breath.
"Nothing. That is good, Lilith," the Voice buzzed with no inflection. "I will not share you, not with Fleurety, not with Agaliarept, and certainly not with the dirt of humanity."
There it is again, thought Adramalik, that incredible possessiveness. And who can blame him?
"Thank you, my Prince," Lilith said quietly.
"And keep that handmaiden of yours at heel. Her many trips away are at an end." His Voice trailed off into a prolonged buzz, losing all semblance to language. The faintest whirring of wings could be heard from atop the throne, growing in volume as more and more of the flies of his body grew agitated. Lilith stood her ground, her red eyes focused somewhere beyond him, somewhere in the dark recesses of the dome, searching the gloom above for the first signs of movement.
The buzzing increased and Lilith's eyes betrayed her. The Chancellor General could see the weight of her resignation in how she held her head, the way her hands hung by her sides.
Adramalik always wondered if when Beelzebub broke apart or came together it started with a single fly, one who gathered all the rest about himself. One with that particular spark that was Beelzebub. He would never know. As the Prince took wing, his garments tumbled and floated toward the ground and Adramalik caught them with practiced hands.
He watched, fascinated, every time his master approached. The already-thick air around the throne grew dense with a shimmering cloud of flies, each trailing a tiny flame of green. They circled the dome's interior, fading in and out of the murky light, growing in numbers and density until it seemed that an almost solid, fluid body twisted between the hanging skins. After a few sinuous, blurred revolutions the swarm finally coalesced yards from Lilith into a dark, roughly humanoid shape. There, a few feet from the ground, it floated, its surface alive with the settling movement of the flies. Suddenly each fly purposefully inlaid itself like a tiny fierce tile in some living mosaic resolving its form, smoothing itself, and when it finally extended a taloned foot to step upon the floor it was transformed into the Prince of Hell.
Adramalik hastened forward to help drape the fine skin tunic, the sumptuous crimson and gold cloak, and then the heavy necklaces of state upon his Prince's form. He took special care, as he did so, not to touch the huge iridescent wings that hung, trembling ever so slightly, from Beelzebub's back. As the Chancellor General stepped back, Beelzebub's ornate sigils flared to life upon his chest, fiery filigrees that cast a dull light upon the Fly's face.
Unincorporated flies still swarmed, like the eager pets they were, around him and then made their way to Lilith. She ignored them, staring fixedly at the charnel-house floor.
Adramalik stepped a few paces back. He took a deep breath and looked, once again, with pleased reverence upon his Prince's face. It had been weeks since he had been in the Rotunda.
"Ah, Lilith ... ," the Prince said.
She looked up, then, into his face. It was a beautiful face, Adramalik thought, an uneven split of human and fly, the greater influence leaning toward the insect. This time, he noted, Beelzebub had fifteen eyes; it was a number that changed every time he appeared.
Adramalik could guess what Lilith thought when she looked into that face, softened, as it was, with the unforgivable love its owner felt for her. Personally, the Chancellor General could not fathom that emotion. Lust, no matter what the form, he understood, but not the additional embellishment; that he regarded as a sign of weakness and vulnerability. Not that he would have ever explained that to Beelzebub.
Adramalik watched Beelzebub, as he had so many times before, reach out a clawed, bristled hand, palm up and coaxing. She took it, unhesitatingly, unflinchingly. She had learned, Adramalik thought, smiling approvingly, remembering all the hard lessons. The millennia had taught her. That and the Scourges.
The Prince drew his Consort close. He towered over her and it was only after the flies at his joints separated somewhat that he could bend to reach her. And when he had, he tenderly held her head in his hands, guiding it toward the long proboscis that depended from the center of his face.
Lilith closed her eyes. She had learned that, too.
He kissed her, the long, thick tongue reaching downward, its hundreds of glistening black flies dancing in her throat.
Throughout the long embrace Lilith held herself rigidly still; Beelzebub either did not notice or enjoyed her resistance. Adramalik found himself unable to look away.
He knew that, somehow, she had found ways to ignore Beelzebub's paranoia, his strict authoritarianism, his delusions, his rages. These things, Adramalik reasoned, she could forgive. But, he knew, she would never forgive Beelzebub his affections.
Adramalik continued to watch; he found her unwillingness beyond exciting.
Chapter Nine
DIS
Eligor's spirits sank with every step he took. He, Sargatanas, and Valefar had landed before the Western Gate—the so-called Porta Viscera—and stood, for a moment, at its foot. It, like its four counterparts, was an angular edifice reaching up five hundred feet, constructed of slate-gray native-stone towers, each linked by broad, blank walls. Imposing as they were, there was an additional feature upon its surface that made Eligor's mouth open in amazement. Protruding from the stone, every foot or so, was an L-shaped iron spike, each adorned with withered, impaled human organs. Most were hearts—that most superfluous of organs in Hell—but there were other bits and pieces of forsaken human detritus. Entrails, sexual organs, even eyes decorated the walls, all buffeted in the stiff wind and giving the impression of a vertical carpet of moving life. Among these gruesome trophies scuttled a variety of small climbing Abyssals whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to pick at the remnants. As Sargatanas, Valefar, and Eligor passed under the gate's arch, he watched as waves of the many-legged creatures ebbed and flowed across the wall's surface, plucking, pinching, and tugging on the shredded flesh. As they passed beneath the gate's arch, fragments skittered down the wall narrowly missing them, clumping in the wide passageway only to be swept up by attendant souls.