"A demon was mentioned, aye." I shrugged. "But nothing was said of tolls, Your Honour."
"Why come here?"
"For fresh supplies."
"To the City of the Plague?" He sneered. "To this awful City of the Demon? No! You came to cause us distress!"
"But, sir, how can we two cause a whole city distress?" I asked. The man was mad. I believed, reluctantly, that probably all Bakinax was mad. I regretted my decision to come here and felt in agreement with the Great Magistrate when he suggested that only a fool would seek out Bakinax.
"By being what you are. By seeing what you see!" replied the Magistrate. "We shall not be mocked, travellers! We shall not be mocked."
"We do not mock," I told him. "We promise that we shall not ever mention Bakinax again. Only, good sir, let us continue on our way, for we have a holy mission to perform."
"Aye, indeed you have," said the old man with some relish. "You must pay for your stupidity and your contempt for us with your souls. You will be given to our demon. Two of us shall thus be saved for a little longer and you will receive fitting punishment for your crimes. Your souls will go to Hell."
At this I laughed. Sedenko had no idea what had passed between us. I told him roughly what had been said.
He was not as amused as!. Perhaps he did not really believe that his soul was already destined for Lucifer's Realm.
Chapter XIII
"You, SIR," SAID the Great Magistrate, addressing me, "shall be the first to fight our demon. None has ever beaten him. Should you, however, manage to kill him, the door of the sphere shall be released and you will be free. If you have not emerged in an hour, your friend will be sent to join you."
"I am to be allowed to carry my sword?" said I.
"All you possess you may take with you," he told me.
"Then I am ready," I said.
The Great Magistrate spoke to his soldiers in their own tongue. One stood guard over Sedenko, while the rest escorted me from the Court and back into the square where the rain had again begun to fall.
We mounted steps onto the platform. The sphere had set in it a small round door which one of the guards approached. He was nervous. He put his palm against the handle and hesitated.
I saw a figure enter the square.
If anything, Klosterheim was even more gaunt than when last I saw him. He was grinning at me now. He was almost trembling with pleasurable anticipation. His black garments were stained and neglected; the purple feathers in his hat were matted and stringy and he had developed a peculiar, almost undetectable stoop. His eyes had that same inturned insanity. He removed his hat in a mock salute as the door groaned open and the soldiers pushed me forward.
"Was this your doing, Klosterheim?" I asked.
The witch-seeker shrugged. "I am a friend," he said, "to Bakinax."
"Is this demon your gift to the city?"
He ignored me, signing casually to the guards.
With a wave to him I bent and entered the foul-smelling darkness, salty and damp, of the sphere. Crouching there, I blinked, peered, but saw nothing. The round door clanked shut behind me. Gradually I began to see. The light came from a peculiar substance washing the floor of the sphere. It was white and it was viscous and it was obviously, too, the source of the smell. Something emerged from it at the farthest point from me. The fluid at the bottom of the sphere made sucking sounds. There was no colour here. All seemed grey, black and white. The thing which moved through the liquid was larger than I. It had scales. It had a great, sad, misshapen head which had fallen to one side and almost rested on its left shoulder. Its long teeth were broken and its lips were ragged, as if they had been chewed to destruction. From one large nostril came a little vapour. The monster squeaked at me, almost a question.
"Art thou the Demon of the Sphere?" I asked him.
The head lifted a fraction. Then, after some while, a voice came from the back of its throat.
"I am."
"Thou must know," said I, "that my soul is not for eating. It already belongs to our Master, Lucifer."
"Lucifer." The word was distorted. "Lucifer?"
"He owns it. I can offer you no sustenance, therefore, Sir Demon. I can only offer you death."
"Death?" It licked its torn lips with a ruined tongue. A smile seemed to appear on its features. "Lucifer? I wish to be free. I want to eat nothing more. Why do they feed me so much? All they have to do is release me from the pact and I will fly straight back to Hell."
"You do not want to be here?** "I have never wanted to be here. I was tricked. Through my own greed I was tricked. I know your soul is not for me, mortal. I could smell it if it were mine. I cannot smell your soul."
"Yet you will still kill me, eh?"
The demon sat down in the fluid. He splashed at it with his taloned fingers. "Children and youths. This stuff is all that remains. There is not one soul in Bakinax…not one adult soul, that is…which is not already claimed. I will not kill you, mortal, unless you grow bored and want to fight. You are one of the few who has wished to talk. Most of them scream. The children, the youths and the maidens, I eat. It silences them. It entertains me. It feeds me for a little while. But I have more than enough. More than enough."
"But you will not release me from your lair?"
"How can I? I am trapped here myself. A pact. It seemed worthwhile all that time ago."
"Who was the magus who trapped you?"
"He was called Philander Groot. A cunning man. I roamed free before, across this whole kingdom. Now I am limited to Bakinax and this cage. Oh, I am so tired of the flavourless souls of the young." He took some of the fluid up on his finger and sucked. He sighed.
"But they fear you," I said. "It is why they keep you here. They believe you will escape if they do not placate you."
The demon said: "Is that not always the way with Men? What must I represent to them, I wonder?"
I leaned, as best I could, against the wall of the sphere. I was growing used to the smell. "Well, they will not release you and they will not release me unless I kill you. You have food. I have not. I must starve to death, it seems, or destroy you."
The demon looked up at me. "I have no desire to kill you, mortal. It would give offence to our Master, would it not? Your tune is not yet arrived."
"I believe that," I said. "For I am upon a mission directly instructed by Lucifer."
"Then we have a dilemma," said the demon.
I thought for a moment. "I could attempt to exorcise you," I told him. "That would at least release you from the sphere. Where would you go?"
"Directly back to Hell."
"Where you would wish to be."
"I never want to leave Hell again," said the demon feelingly.
"I am no expert at exorcism."
"They have attempted to exorcise me, but those already pledged to Hell, whether they know it or not, cannot bid me leave."
"Therefore I cannot exorcise you either."
"It would seem so."
"We have reached impasse again," I said.
The demon lowered its head and sighed a deeper sigh than the first. "Aye."
"What if I killed you?" I said. "Where would your own soul go?" 'Oblivion. I would rather not die, Sir Knight." 'Yet I was told the door will open only after I have slain you.'
'Since nobody has slain me, how are they to know that?" 'Perhaps Philander Groot told them."
I brooded on the problem for a while. "The door must be opened eventually, to admit my companion, who is to be your next victim. Why cannot we escape when his turn comes?"
"It might be possible for you to escape," said the demon. ''But I am trapped by more than metal. There is the pact, you see, with the magus. Were I to break it, I would be destroyed instantly."
"Therefore only Philander Groot can release you."