The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (28 page)

Jenn gasped as the first rays of Fierd came over the vast mountains, lighting up the multicolored wings and mohawks of the aetós. It was breathtaking to watch their mighty wings beat rhythmically, lifting them higher and higher in a spiral around the carpets. As they rose, the chill morning air of the higher altitude caused their breath to become visible. Gastropé was at a loss for words as he looked out over the sylvan beauty of the Grove, nestled inside its circle of oversized, rugged mountains, the light beginning to sparkle on its thousands of ponds and small lakes.

They were at a truly dizzying height, Gastropé realized looking down; higher than he could remember ever being on a carpet before. So high, in fact, wisps of the giant white cloud above the lake were starting to mix in with their chilled breaths. They were now rising through the very outer edges of the large cloud. He wondered when they’d be able to see the Nimbus above the cloud.

For a few moments, they were enveloped in the soft whiteness of the edge of the cloud, and then it began clearing as they rose out of the edge of the cloud, revealing the top of the cloud like a giant snow-covered hill.

Jenn, sitting beside Gastropé, begun looking around, presumably for the ship. Oddly, there did not appear to be a ship above the clouds.
Where could it be?
Gastropé wondered.

As they cleared the cloud top, the aetós shifted their motion and began flying toward the center of the cloud. Gnorbert made some different gestures and their carpet began following the aetós. They had floated over the cloud for perhaps a minute when Gastropé spotted what appeared to be a man in a long coat and large hat waving at them. He was standing in the middle of the cloud!

“Ahoy!” The man called.

“Ahoy, Nimbus!” Gnorbert yelled back.

“Chief Engineer Gnorbert and her ladyship, the Enchantress of the Grove, with her entourage. Permission to come aboard?” Gnorbert called out.

“Ahoy, Gnorbert! Second Mate Trefalger here. By the Captain’s leave, permission granted! Welcome, her ladyship!”

Gastropé blinked as other figures began appearing on top of the cloud with the first officer. Jenn gasped as the aetós began landing on the cloud beside the first officer.

Gnorbert made more gestures and their carpet started rotating sideways; as Gastropé looked to the other carpets, he realized they were all in a long line, side by side, also rotating.

“Ahoy, Nimbus! Battle carpets preparing to dock.”

“Battle carpets, docking stations ready,” said one of several men walking out to meet the carpets. “All carpets aligned, prepare for touchdown!” The sailors?—Gastropé did not know what to call them—walked right up to the edge of the carpets and were suddenly pulling ropes out of the cloud and fastening them to loops on the corners of the carpets.

“Carpet down,” Gnorbert said at normal volume.

Gastropé felt the carpet touch down as if on solid ground, but he could see only fluffy cloud at the edge of the carpet. What were they standing on?

Trevin was standing up free from her harness. She stepped off the carpet and onto the cloud.

“Welcome to the Nimbus, my friends! It’s my home away from home, and I’ve been gone way too long!” The crew of the Nimbus, including the riders on the other carpets, all cheered. Jenn and Gastropé and even Maelen and Elrose were peering suspiciously at the cloud beneath her feet.

Trevin saw them all looking and laughed. “Have no fear—look at the Modgriensofarthgonosefren.” She gestured to the dwarves getting off the carpet with no qualms. “Do you think one of them would be getting off the carpet if the deck beneath their feet was not solid?”

The one named Molche heard and replied loudly, “Aye, but it’s damn unnatural. Dwarves don’t belong in no cloud. If my ancestors could see me doing this, they’d shave my beard for sure!” The other dwarves laughed, and a couple exchanged hand slaps.

“If Hephaestus had meant dwarves to travel in the clouds, he would have forged us some metal wings!” Farswath griped loudly.

Trevin laughed. “Well, you may just get the chance to ask him why he didn’t then! Our quest is to track down one of his good friends and fellow god.”

Carnwath shouted back good-naturedly, “And that’s supposed to make us feel better? Hunting gods in the clouds? Aye, you overdwellers have all been driven nuts by too much fierdshine!” The other dwarves all laughed.

Gnorbert had finished helping the sailors secure their carpet. “During tonight’s card game, I will certainly drink to that!” the gnome shouted to Carnwath.

“We all will!” Trevin shouted in return.

“I have to admit,” Elrose said, cautiously stepping off the carpet, “getting the Modgriensofarthgonosefren out from under a mountain and onto a cloud is nothing short of a miracle.”

Trevin grinned at him. “They’re a good and loyal band. I could not ask for better. Although to be honest, it did take some convincing.”

“And a fair amount of braich!” Carnwath added as he walked by heading for the cargo carpets.

“Braich?” Maelen asked curiously.

“A favorite among the underground peoples,” Trevin told him. “A fermented grain, similar to a whisky.” She turned to the others. “So, are you planning on staying on the carpets for the entire trip, or would you like to see your staterooms?”

~

“Very interesting indeed,” Moradel said as Hilda finished her report.

“An incredible wealth of information!” Beragamos exclaimed. “We really should have been using our own field agents sooner—far better information than we get out of the Rod or the priests.”

Sentir Fallon was shaking his head. “I find it amazing, Hilda, how you get those people to just open up and tell you this.” He looked to the other avatars. “This is far better than traditional interviews and interrogations.”

Hilda shrugged, happy with their response. “Well, there is that old saying: in wine there is truth.”

Moradel chuckled. “Keep this up, Hilda, and we may have to change your title to Patron Saint of Loose Lips!” They all laughed at this as they sat around a table in the small meeting room.

“Unfortunately, while an incredible amount of information, it still doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Beragamos complained.

“Well, clearly Lenamare was tricked by this so-called greater demon; it must be an archdemon, if not a prince,” Sentir Fallon stated.

“What about this Bastet?” Hilda asked. “Could she be a pagan god up to no good?”

Moradel shrugged. Beragamos grimaced and said, “I doubt it. The Nyjyr Ennead have been gone from all the local planes of reality for nearly a thousand years. I’ll need to confirm, but I believe I read a report that their outer realms had collapsed.”

“That would mean they would have no power base, no place for their god pool or for their dead,” Sentir Fallon stated. “At which point they would be defunct as a pantheon.”

“Could they have survived as individuals, reduced in stature to demon level?” Moradel asked.

Beragamos shrugged. “I suppose anything is possible, but the level of humiliation that would entail is more than I can imagine any of them could deal with.”

Sentir Fallon nodded. “I think it far better to assume that this woman is, as she appears to her compatriots, an archdemoness who just happens to take on a form favored by Bastet.”

Beragamos was making odd faces as if trying to recall something. “As I recall, she was particularly moral. I can’t see her consorting with demons. Killing demons, as a cat would kill vermin? Yes. Consorting with them? No.”

“Now, on the other hand, this sword could be a problem,” Beragamos said.

Sentir Fallon sighed. “Talarius bore Excrathadorus Mortis by right of being the most senior Knight Rampant. Does anyone know where he acquired this Ruiden? Is it a holy artifact of Tiernon? I have never heard of one of our swords being able to shapeshift.”

Beragamos snorted. “You know how old I am—I have never heard of any sword being able to shapeshift and walk around looking for its owner. This is completely unprecedented.”

Moradel asked, “Are we sure it is actually a sword? It sounds more like some sort of being that shape shifted into the form of a sword.”

“All good questions, to which we have no answers.” Sentir Fallon shook his head from side to side in puzzlement. “It just strikes me as unnatural. Metal—pure metal is inhospitable to animatic creatures as far as we know. When forging a blade, spirits are generally attached to an anima jar linked to and embedded in the blade. Did you see any crystals?”

Hilda shook her head. “It is possible that its two black eyes might have been some sort of stone or crystal, but they struck me more as being like polished hematite or similar shiny black metal.”

“And you say it did not attract much attention?” Beragamos asked.

“Well, it did when it approached me; everyone was staring at it. How it got through the city without being accosted, or for that matter left, is something of a mystery. I left it in the hallway off the storage room,” Hilda said.

“One would think the city guards and various wizards would have stopped it to question it. They can’t be that jaded,” Moradel said.

“One would hope.” Beragamos shook his head in wonderment.

“I will make inquiries with those of our people who have worked the most with Talarius to find out where this sword came from. But it does not sound like a holy artifact dedicated to Tiernon,” Moradel said.

“One would think we would have heard of something so wondrous and unusual,” Beragamos said.

~

Vaselle was nearly beside himself; however, he could not decide if it was from fear, joy, excitement, terror, anxiety, love or exactly what. With great trepidation and more than a little fear, he had ventured out of the city this morning to summon Estrebrius to see if the dark master had come to any conclusions regarding his fate.

Much to Vaselle’s joy and fear, the dark master himself had come forth to instruct him. He had told Vaselle that he had to be sure of Vaselle’s devotion. The dark master would only take him and his soul if it was freely given and Vaselle was totally committed. In his infinite generosity, the dark master had also told him that should he change his mind, or be unable to complete his task, the dark master would not hold it against him and he would be free to go. Could one ask for anything better from such an awe-inspiring being?

The task? Vaselle had to figure out how to cast a familiar binding on himself and then hand the ownership of the binding over to the dark master. It was inspired, Vaselle had to admit. He had had no idea of how demons bound their wizards; clearly, it was a closely guarded secret of the demon lords. However, this made so much sense he could not believe he had not thought about it. A warlock was to all intents and purposes a demon lord’s familiar!

It was so logical, so ingenious—and by requiring Vaselle to enslave himself, to debase himself to the level of a familiar, it was perfect! Of course, the problem was, he had no real idea of how to reengineer the spell. The dark master had told him he could have time to figure it out, and he was certainly grateful. He would need to spend some serious study time at the palace library. While obviously there were plenty of books on binding demons to oneself, he was reasonably certain there would be no books on binding oneself to a demon. However, he was sure he could piece something together.

~

Jenn poked the milky-white wall of her stateroom aboard the Nimbus with her forefinger. It was surprisingly solid, for a cloud. To say the… uh,
ship
was a bit odd was an understatement. Apparently, the entire cloud they had seen from the ground was the ship. Unlike a normal ship, however, the passengers were all inside the cloud rather than on top. The top deck was mainly for launching and landing flying carpets.

The interior of the cloud was composed of hallways and rooms that had been “carved” out of the cloud, or so it appeared. The halls and rooms were all lined with carpets and rugs to give people a more secure feeling and to add to perspective. Left with a solid white ceiling, floors and walls, it would be extremely difficult to tell where one was going or where the walls actually were.

To ease navigation around the ship, there were tapestries hanging from the walls here and there, particularly at corners and intersections. Her room was not huge, but was still good sized compared to an actual sailing ship’s cabin. She had a normal-sized single bed, a nightstand, a dresser and a small writing desk and chair. There was no door, only a solid blue, heavy curtain. All the doors were solid curtains; their color indicated whether they were common areas, private cabins, or for specific functions such as water closets or control rooms.

Trevin had assured them that the ship was not as insubstantial as it appeared. While it was made out of solid cloud, it had a mithral and adamantite framework that outlined and supported all the rooms and corridors. The cloud walls, floors and ceilings were all maintained by runes fashioned into the mithral and adamantite frame. The Nimbus was a seventh-generation cloudship and as such, was highly tested and reliable, Gnorbert assured them.

That was all quite nice, intellectually, but Jenn’s insides were still finding the cloudship to be rather discomforting. It had been clear that Gastropé had shared her misgivings, and she suspected that Elrose and Maelen might as well. None had seemed tremendously enthusiastic. Elrose, however, had spent a considerable amount of time probing Trevin over the wizardly details of the enchantments that kept the ship together.