Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (16 page)

Emperor Shay'tan

Shay'tan

Some called him the devil, but dragons were an ancient species, blunt instruments created at He-who's-not's insistence to protect
HER
from Moloch's constant incursions. Moloch was a cancer; whatever he infected needed to be excised. But where the Dark Lord's power was so vast
HE
destroyed entire galaxies, dragons drew upon a specific force of nature, thereby diluting the Song of Destruction enough that only a single planet or continent would be destroyed. She-who-is still wept to see her playthings broken, but it was at a smaller scale, more manageable than the wholesale chaos of the Dark Lord, and as the dragons evolved, they had learned to dampen their power.

As the millennia passed, She-who-is shaped
new
creatures to inhabit her universe … tender beings with short lives and frail physical bodies that could incarnate into new physical forms faster than Moloch could corrupt them. One day the dragons lured Moloch into a trap. Deprived of physical form, the Evil One was limited to what he could convince mortals to do on his behalf. At first mortals were grateful to be rid of Moloch, but over time the weaker, naturally evolved races forgot how dangerous the Evil One would be if he ever found a vessel capable of carrying his non-corporeal form. The ungrateful mortals began to resent the enormous, destructive dragons and view
them
as their adversaries.

Heartbroken at the naturally evolved races betrayal, one by one the dragons disappeared, until finally only one dragon remained…

Y Ddraig Goch
… the dragon known as Emperor Shay'tan…

And the element he controlled was fire…

* * * * *

"Where in
Haven
did Ba'al Zebub send my armada!"

Shay'tan smashed a clawed fist down upon the table. On that table an enormous spinning replica of the galaxy depicted the source of his irritation. The chessboard flickered, but continued to taunt him with a reassuring hum, reminding him that for all his powers, his chief henchman had played him for a fool!

"I d-d-don't know, y-y-your Eminence!" the elderly Sata'anic lizard stammered. He glanced at the small, concrete bunker which graced every room in the palace, his tail twitching as he no doubt calculated the running distance to dive inside. "The Sata'an Secret Service has poured through every record we have on Ba'al Zebub's activities. So far as we can tell, the only place he funneled money was here."

The scribe pointed to a pale silver circle where the map
should
have shown a planet orbiting a sun. The planet was now nothing but rubble, a casualty of Hashem's temper tantrum over Lucifer's mother dumping him to run back to her rebel husband. Bright blue triangles blinked closer to the aforementioned planet. Abaddon's
Jehoshaphat
… and a third of Hashem's armies!

Tiny red flames sparked down Shay'tan's scales and began to heat the room. The scribe sensed it too. Beads of sweat gathered on his eyebrow-ridges as the lizard-man edged closer to the bunker, centuries of service having taught him when his emperor and god was about to lose his temper.

"There's nothing there!" Shay'tan shouted. Fire incinerated the blackout curtains which had already been replaced three times. The scribe dove into the bunker and slammed shut the door.

The Hades sun shone through the smoke, diluting the holographic map of the galaxy and, therefore, Shay'tan's anger. It wasn't enough to dim the frantically blinking red triangles which were lined up on
his
side of the now-defunct planet
Tyre,
the place where Shay'tan had accidentally killed Hashem's adopted son…

He thought…

Actually, he wasn't really sure. He hadn't
meant
to kill the pompous little peacock. Just to capture Ba'al Zebub and torture the
real
location of Earth out of him! The destruction of Lucifer's diplomatic flagship so close to the seat of his biological father's Third Empire had been purely an accident.

If only Hashem would believe that…

"Damn you, Lucifer!" Shay'tan craned his serpentine neck at the smaller blue triangles which combed the territory searching for Lucifer's body. "Damn you for sticking your nose into business that had nothing to do with you!"

Two strings of triangles blinked closer together. Red … Shay'tan's war fleet. Blue … Abaddon's renegades. Red … blue … red … blue. Moving closer to a confrontation
neither
empire would survive. In the center of that map, five tiny blue triangles sifted through the debris of Ba'al Zebub's destroyed ship, searching for the bodies of their
own
Alliance Prime Minister and the wreckage of the Alliance flagship,
Prince of Tyre.
Shay'tan had ordered his warships to hang back and not antagonize the search vessels even though they crossed back and forth into Sata'anic airspace
,
but he could not allow an all-out incursion by
The Destroyer
to go unanswered.

The door to the bunker opened a crack. The scribe peeked out, his dorsal fin rustling with fear.

"Your Eminence?" The scribe's voice was a high-pitched, hissing plea.

Shay'tan realized he
acted like a mindless demon. Devil … that's what the Alliance called his species. What would
she
say if she saw him now? Sadness dulled his anger, causing the flames which licked down his scales to cool. He tucked his enormous, leathery wings against his back and sat down on his haunches, doing his best to appear to Budayl as a mortal.

"Any word from our spies?"

"The Alliance Parliament thinks the planet is
here,
" the scribe pointed a planet outside the neutral zone surrounding
Tyre
, "in
our
side of the territory. According to the whistleblower report, that was where Apausha delivered the human females.

That uneasy feeling that had sat in Shay'tan's gut ever since he'd received word about Ba'al Zebub's betrayal rumbled a warning. Something else was going on here, but he had yet to figure out what.

"What about Hashem?" Shay'tan asked. "What does
he
know?"

"Our spies have never been able to infiltrate his inner circle," the scribe said softly. "All we know is that the former Supreme Commander-General has taken refuge at the Eternal Palace."

"Jophiel knows something," Shay'tan pinched his eyebrow ridges. "But you say no one has shown up at the Eternal Gate to carry out Parliament's command?"

"No, your Eminence." The scribe opened the blast-door far enough for Shay'tan to see his entire snout. "Perhaps Abaddon fears angering his god?"

"Abaddon fears no man," Shay'tan said. "Neither man nor god. Many a good Sata'anic soldier has lost his life at the end of his sword, and more still at the bequest of his war fleet." Shay'tan paced over to the now-exposed window and stared out over his capital city, Dis. Citizens moved about the city below in an orderly manner; loyal, obedient, and pleasing.

"No … if Abaddon hasn't bashed down Hashem's door, either he truly believes the false intelligence Ba'al Zebub fed to them, or in that poor, misguided mind of his, Abaddon still bears some affection for his Emperor and god."

Shay'tan looked over to the singed report the scribe had just abandoned to burn on the floor. Ba'al Zebub worked for some enemy he hadn't yet figured out. Unlike Abaddon, who rebelled against Hashem not for glory, but to recapture his wife's homeworld, Earth, Ba'al Zebub had sold out Shay'tan for an even older god.

Money…

Fresh flames licked down Shay'tan's dorsal ridge. The scribe ducked back behind the door. Oh, goddess-be! He could see now why the other dragons had abandoned this realm, unable to deal with the constant frustration. He closed his eyes and recited the calming exercises
she
had taught him, focusing on cooling the fires at the tip of his tail, his haunches, wings, all the way to his nostrils which still had smoke steaming out of them. Unlike his brethren who had abandoned the ungrateful mortals, Shay'tan had a whole empire full of subjects who needed and adored him. He had initially stayed for
her,
but he continued to stay for
them.

"Would you like for me to summons your wives?" the scribe asked from behind the safety of the blast door. At 360 years old, the scribe had outlived most other Sata'anic lizards and, therefore, had witnessed many other occasions when Shay'tan had lost his battle to contain his temper.

Shay'tan pictured the feel of his wives snuggling up to his enormous girth, caressing his scales and massaging his tissues to remind his body how to keep a mortal shape. Forty-six wives he kept at present, their numbers increasing or decreasing as one passed into the Dreamtime and another was selected to replace her, but every one of them was a beautiful flower in the garden he had created to honor
her.

"In my current state I would end up cooking them alive," Shay'tan rumbled regretfully. "Especially with
The
Destroyer
about to cross into Sata'anic territory."

He hung his head. Everybody wanted to snap their fingers and manifest a godlike power, but few realized what a heavy responsibility it was, worrying that a sneeze might cause you to undo a few hundred thousand years of evolution.

"Perhaps, if your Eminence won't be angered by the thoughts of so unworthy and simple a creature as myself, Sir," the scribe peeked his lizard-like snout out the door again, "might I make a suggestion?"

Shay'tan softened the shape of his claws. "You may speak freely."

"M-m-maybe you should just tell Hashem the truth?"

"What?" Shay'tan exploded. "What truth?" He pointed a clawed hand at the spot where five little triangles searched for their missing leader. "Oops? I'm sorry I killed your adopted son? Rumor has it the ungrateful little bastard staged a rebellion, so I thought I'd help you out by incinerating
him
just like
you
incinerated his biological father?"

He whirled to the spot on the edge of the Tokoloshe Kingdom where dozens of Sata'anic warships
should
have patrolled the volatile border against the cannibals, but only a few red triangles remained, the rest reassigned to fight off Abaddon's impending incursion.

"Or maybe I should tell Hashem that half my war fleet has been
stolen
and the Sata'anic Empire is
defenseless
if he chooses to retaliate and invade?"

The scribe slammed shut the door. This time, Shay'tan managed to only incinerate
half
the room before regaining control of his power. Just for the Haven of it, he snorted a puff of smoke right into the map which showed the advancing warships. For a reassuring moment the smokescreen obscured the truth, but then it cleared, Hashem's blue ships lining up in formation against Shay'tan's red ones.

Oh, goddess! He needed to get control of his temper before he incinerated somebody he didn't mean to hurt. He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm.

"Budayl," Shay'tan finally addressed the scribe by his given name. "Please … ask Edasich to bring her harp and enough supplies to spend the night comfortably in the bunker. And ask her to wear her flame-resistant burqa. I don't dare let her near me, but maybe…"

He didn't finish the thought, but he didn't need to. Budayl had been with him long enough to understand that Edasich, the most comely of his wives, pleased him more than all the others. While a simple-minded creature, she reminded him of
her.
For Edasich he'd do his best to control his anger and maybe, just maybe, her sweet, hissing voice while she sang from the safety of the bunker stories about his
own
heroic exploits might be just the thing he needed to put Ba'al Zebub's betrayal in perspective…

Yes … Ba'al Zebub had deceived him, but Shay'tan was immortal. Sooner or later he would figure out the truth. Yes, sooner or later he always figured out what was really going on…

~ * ~ * ~