The walls fell away on either side as they entered a larger, circular room. The hollowness of their footsteps echoed through the unseen reaches, making the group sound larger than it was. Sargatanas uttered a word and suddenly the room was suffused in pale light. The dark, cloaked figures of the five demons contrasted starkly with the luminosity of the space. Eligor's jaw dropped and
Valefar audibly released his breath, while the two visiting earls looked as if they might turn and run at any moment. All this Sargatanas measured as he stood back and watched the demons.
Eligor squinted, his eyes adjusting to the brightness. He took in the lambent room and realized that for all this to have been completed in such a short time—a matter of weeks—his lord must have driven Halphas and his laborers very hard. And then Eligor remembered the sounds of masons ringing through the long nights.
The joinery of the stones, their perfect dressing, and the care with which they were chosen all bespoke a level of craft that Eligor thought must have been augmented by an Art. Only the fairest, palest stones, laced with delicate veins of gold and silver, had been employed. The walls were punctuated at regular intervals with columned niches, each home, Eligor could discern, to a miraculous lifelike statue of a many-winged figure. The low-domed ceiling, hewn from an unimaginably huge pale-blue opal, flickered with flecks of inner fire, a perfect evocation, Eligor remembered, of the coruscating sky of the Above. Such a room, he knew, was not meant to exist in Hell.
But it was not the walls, nor the beautiful ceiling, nor even the heretical statuary that stirred the demons most. It was the running mosaics with tiles so small that Eligor could barely see them and the nearly floor-to-ceiling friezes and their incredible imagery that took the demons and wrenched them and pulled them in. And reminded them.
Each of the demons approached these shimmering murals and each walked slowly, silently, transfixed. Eligor found himself not looking at the friezes but into them, so rich was their execution, so vivid their portrayals. They began, at both sides of the room, with simple renderings of the Above, of the clear and glowing air, of the lambent clouds and the jeweled ground and the vast sparkling sea. And farther on, the great gold and crimson Tree of Life, heavy with its ripe, swollen fruit set amidst broad and sheltering leaves. Eligor saw, looking closely, the fabulous serpentine chalkadri flying through its boughs, their twelve wings picked out in rainbow jewels. He remembered their mellifluous calls and the Tree's sweet fragrance and could not imagine how he might have forgotten them.
Eligor paused to look at his fellow demons. Thin wisps of steam, barely visible in the light, streamed from their eyes. The two earls had given them-selves over to the images and were breathlessly sidling along the walls, murmuring to themselves and each other. Valefar walked a few paces unsteadily, occasionally putting a tentative hand out upon the wall for support. And at the room's center, standing by a raised altar and watching them all with his intent, silvered eyes, was the fallen seraph, a dark figure as immobile as the angelic statues that surrounded him.
Eligor turned back to the wall and saw the twelve radiant gates of the sun and the twelve pearlescent gates of the moon and the treasuries that housed the clouds and dew, the snow and the ice. There he saw the first depicted angels who guarded those storehouses, and it was a shock to see them, for he had tried very hard to forget their gracefulness.
Valefar, who was ahead of the other three demons, reached the farthest tableau, and something there that Eligor could not yet see caused him to cry out. He reeled backward, as if struck, nearly colliding with his lord. Sargatanas put out a hand and steadied his friend.
As if he were clinging to the side of a cliff with his hands, Eligor guided himself tentatively along the curving wall, examining its images, pausing to remember. The mosaic-bordered bas-reliefs showed more and more of the glittering hosts and their cities of light. Eligor knew what would follow: the ten greatest cities of creation, tiered like enormous steps upon the flank of the celestial mount, ascending toward the Throne.
These spired cities, crystalline and pure, filled with their multitudes of seraphim and cherubim, seemed, to his pained eyes, alive with the angels' comings and goings. He was sure that he even recognized some of the angels, so great was the craft of the sculptors. In stone and jewels and metals the angels marched and sang and toiled, and as he looked at them Eligor recalled doing all of those things.
When he reached the foot of the Throne in all its soaring radiance he saw that it was surrounded by the six-winged archangels, swords in hand, singing praises as he had seen them do. The echoes of their celestial harmonies were so loud and the vision of them so real that he stumbled upon Andromalius, who, along with Bifrons, had reached the spot ahead of him. They were both upon their knees, gasping, hands outstretched against the wall. Eligor caught himself and, with pounding trepidation, looked upon the sublime Face of God. Its evocation was so glorious and terrible, so threatening and full of love, that he, too, exclaimed aloud. How did I forget? He found that he could not look away. Its beauty burned fiercely into his mind like a brand, like sparking iron—but not nearly as powerfully as when he had been in its presence so long ago. He could not control his shaking and, with steam blurring his vision, staggered away to where his lord and Valefar stood.
Sargatanas, his chest rising and falling, appeared moved by their reactions; Eligor heard his breath, deep and rhythmic like a bellows. He had not strayed from the room's center, but in his hand, drawn from some hidden sheath, Eligor now saw a new-forged and unfamiliar sword, downward bent and vicious, wreathed in vapor and glyphs. A new sword—a Falcata—consecrated for a new war. Sargatanas held it up before him, and all of the demons' eyes were drawn to it.
Looking at each of them in turn, the Demon Major said coldly, "Brothers, we will look upon that Face again."
Chapter Fourteen
DIS
Lilith rocked on her heels, balled up, like something empty and windblown and discarded, cast into the corner of her bedchamber. It was dark and she wore the darkness like an old, comforting friend. Once, for a short time, she had been very much a creature of the night, and she still could see quite well in the blackness. Her precious carving tools were strewn about on the floor; she could see them and the torn and broken furnishings and the holes she had punched into the bone walls. She could see, too, the broken room partition, evidence of where the Order Knights, angered by her furious struggling, had thrown her. She did not need to see the bruises; they were obvious enough. She crouched in near darkness, the only light filtering in from a crack she had kicked into the door.
It had been weeks since Ardat Lili had been taken from her. Weeks of confusion and pain and darkness. She had determined to give the Fly nothing willingly. His attempts at what he considered sex, while growing less frequent, were also growing more violent. Lilith feared that it was only a matter of time before she, too, swung high above his throne. Could he actually do that to me?
What would he tell Lucifer?
Her shaking subsided and she rose, unsteadily. Her clawed feet trod upon the bits and pieces of her few possessions as she crossed the room to the upended little table she had done her carving on. It was oddly unbroken—a survivor like her. She righted it and then went about searching for the few items she would need to summon her familiar. She had not done that since she had come to Hell and worried that perhaps she might not remember how. But try she would. The time of tears was over. Now was the time of action.