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Perhaps it was naive, but I secretly began to send out my little statues, sowing them
among the damned. They became my surrogates for freedom and salvation ... and
revenge."
He nodded gravely. "That answers why. But not what made you come here."
"I ... suffered a great loss." She paused. There would be a time to tell him about Ardat,
about just how much she meant to her, but not now. "My lord, do you know what the
demons in Dis call Adamantinarx? With slitted eyes and filled with hate they call it the
'City That Fell from Heaven.' Everyone there knows what it represents ... that it is the
best that one can find in Hell. Everyone, too, knows of its lord and how he rules that
city."
Lilith knew well the other reason she had chosen Adamantinarx, knew that she could not
yet tell him that she had seen in his infrequent visits to Dis something in him that had
reminded her of another demon her lost lord. Sargatanas bore many of the same
irresistible qualities that had made Lucifer the force he was: the ambition, the idealism,
the ferocity. And now she had seen yet another similar side, the self-flagellating remorse.
"From what I have heard," he rumbled, "they spit after they utter that. And not just
because they say the word 'Heaven.' Everyone may know of Adamantinarx, but not
everyone wants it to exist."
"True, but I do. And I would call it home. I can never see Heaven; this is as close as I can
come."
"And just how did you make your journey? Valefar never told me."
"Anonymously, alone, and upon the back of a beast. Prime Minister Agares had a hand in
it. He is a strange one, my lord. On the surface dutiful, but beneath he is in great turmoil,
I think. Were I the Fly I would not put too much trust in his allegiances."
"Interesting. I cannot imagine being in proximity to the Fly each and every day and not
being a willing vassal. It would destroy a lesser demon. Well, Lilith," Sargatanas said,
extending his hand, "you are welcome in the City That Fell from Heaven and as long as
you stay here I will protect you with my last phalangite if need be."
Lilith put her hand so white and small compared to his upon his upturned palm,
feeling the heat of it spreading. She shuddered as an unfamiliar sensation spread
throughout her, a clawing away of the fear and misery that was such a large part of her
being. Trapped beneath the millennia-deep sediment of her torment and resentment lay a
pearlescent sealed casket and, within it, that imagined, barely fluttering self that Lilith
knew had been deeply buried since she had arrived.
She looked down, shaking her head slightly.
"What is it?" Sargatanas asked softly.
"I ... I feel as if I am either dreaming or awakening."
The demon lord rose and, still cupping her hand in his, drew her up.
"It cannot be a dream, Lilith. My dreams are never this ... engaging."
Lilith smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and felt as if her soul, like a dock of winged
night-silvers, had risen, released at last, from within that now-open box.
Chapter Nineteen
DIS
The Keep was more silent than Adramalik had ever remembered it. What few
functionaries he saw in its corridors and rooms bore the unmistakable mark of terror upon
their faces. Tales were beginning to filter up from its base, tales of what had happened
out in the city's Sixtieth Ward after the Prince had finally resigned himself to the fact that
his Consort was no longer in Dis. What Adramalik heard made even him shudder.
He had been present when the Prince had finally come to the dark conclusion that Lilith
was gone. Adramalik and Agares and a few other principals had, at first, stood rooted to
the floor with mouths agape when Beelzebub's howling rage had manifested itself. Tiny
flies, growing in size, had peeled away from his body in a seemingly unending, rising
spiral, horrific to behold. And their faces, faces that he knew to have once belonged to
angels, were pocked and distorted, torn and twisted, sublime in their madness. Each
bloated fly was different from its brother, but each bore many limbs that ended in black
blades that snapped and cut the air as the creatures, enlarging as they flew, jostled toward
the Rotunda's openings and flooded forth into the dark skies of Dis. Relief spread through
Adramalik's shaking body as he watched them depart; for a moment he had actually
wondered if Beelzebub's rage might spill over onto him and Agares and indeed everyone
in the Keep. But in a few short minutes the small gathering was standing alone in the
quiet Rotunda, left wide-eyed and trembling, watching the frantic swaying of the skins
above. Adramalik could not remember when his master had left the Keep last.
Even now he could hear, in the fearful silence that smothered the Keep, the echo of the
whir of their wings and the sound their clattering bodies made, and a part of him held his
breath in awe.
A day later, after the Prince had resumed his throne, someone had ventured into the
Sixtieth Ward and come back to the Keep with a tale of what he had seen there. It was a
large precinct, but, even so, nothing had been spared.
Souls, demons, buildings, even the very streets had been shredded, chopped, and
ultimately defiled. Squashed hummocks of body parts stood in the plazas, misshapen
islands in expanding lakes of blood. The stench of tens of thousands of rotting, half-
consumed bodies, of buildings chewed and vomited up and stinking feces from the
ensuing feast, had been overpowering even by hellish standards. And over the entire ward
a fog of blood hung so thick that it made the carnage all the worse for its gradually
revealed butcheries. The fog blanketed the ward for a few days and then it moved, by
either command or the caprices of the infernal zephyrs, off toward the Wastes to
ultimately descend, he had heard, upon Adamantinarx. Adramalik did not agree with
those who rationalized it as a natural event; he knew his Prince too well and knew that he
had every reason to suspect where his Consort had fled to. The fog was a warning. But,
Adramalik pondered, how had she so easily managed to leave Dis unseen and
unquestioned? This was something he needed to find out.
Now keeping to himself, alternately pacing and sitting at his desk in his chambers, he felt
no sense of comfort, even surrounded as he was by his loyal Knights. They, too, knew
that venturing forth might provoke the dark figure who sat so nearby upon his charnel
throne, wrapped in black hatred and paranoia. It was a time to measure one's appearances,
a time to be careful.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
Lilith entered the arcade and passed a dozen ambassadors as they exited the main
chamber. She was becoming a regular visitor, and none of the guards she stepped past
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