The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (36 page)

“That would be faster than Lilith bearing lots of children to mortal men,” Sentir Fallon noted.

“Could a mortal woman even survive such a pregnancy?” Hilda asked suddenly.

Beragamos nodded. “An excellent point; that is another extremely good reason I find the half-demon idea to be extremely unlikely.”

“So Occam’s razor? The simplest answer—the demon is lying?” Moradel asked.

“I would say so,” Beragamos said.

“What about the breaking of Talarius’s word and the use of dark rituals?” Hilda asked.

Moradel frowned. “To be honest, Hilda, the questions raised by all of this are not well answered by the senior avatars. Tiernon himself has been pragmatic about it. I personally feel that breaking one’s word to a demon is far less of a sin than the use of the dark rituals. But I think we will have to have further inquiry into this.”

Beragamos sighed. “And before we can even do that, we shall have to come to some decisions internally about how we shall deal with this sort of moral slippage. If it is happening here, it is happening elsewhere. I can only imagine Etterdam. I would hate to have to take this to Tiernon, but if the hierarchy can’t agree, we may need to bother him.”

Hilda gulped. Had she uncovered something worthy of Tiernon’s own attention? That thought made her stomach twist in knots. Old proverbs made it very clear that one did not one to draw a god’s interest; it was never healthy. While that was officially for mortals, she suspected it would not be that much better for a minor saint.

“And so the mana theft? The reversal of Excrathadorus Mortis?” Hilda asked.

“Which brings us to the central question of this demon. I have no idea who it actually is, unless it’s one of the princes in disguise, which I think seems to be most likely,” Beragamos said.

“Not some demon prince who has been hiding in the deep backwaters of the Abyss? That place is so big, there is no telling who or what is hiding in the backwaters,” Moradel said.

Beragamos shrugged. “Certainly a possibility. The only other one, in fact. This being is obviously a demon prince; I cannot imagine an archdemon capable of what we have seen. In fact, I refuse to imagine such a thing due to the sheer terror of all the archdemons learning to do this.”

“There is one other possibility,” Sentir Fallon said softly.

Beragamos looked at him. “What am I missing?”

“The business with reversing Excrathadorus Mortis—that would require considerable knowledge of the blade, millennia of planning, and the sort of power we’ve witnessed. What just happened could only be done with Tiernon’s own power. A demon seeking specifically to destroy this blade might spend centuries or even millennia researching how to do what we’ve seen, should they wish to ensure the blade’s destruction,” Sentir Fallon told the others.

“But who would go to so much trouble to destroy this blade? And then locate it and set this up?” Beragamos asked.

Sentir Fallon sighed. “Someone who had very real reasons to fear it as the one known thing that could stop him.”

Moradel started coughing. Hilda turned pale.

Beragamos said softly, “You can’t possibly mean…”

Sentir Fallon sat up. “I can’t mean a resurrected demon? Or one that we thought was dead, but isn’t?”

“Hell,” Beragamos said.

Moradel put his head in his arms on the table. “So, should we have Hilda be on the lookout for a sudden uptick in the number of warlocks running around?” he asked.

“Not a bad idea,” Beragamos replied.

“So okay, Vaselle wants another day. He thinks he’s close,” Tom said to the group in the cave. “I told him to take whatever time he needed to do it right. I am hoping he will come to his senses and back out. I’m still a bit nervous about this business, even though I see the points several of you have made.” He and Estrebrius had just returned from Astlan through the gateway. Tom glanced over and saw Reggie paying more attention to his privates than to what Tom was saying.

Tom looked down at his own crotch, now covered by a stretchable loincloth that had come as part of his new belt. With a small loan from Antefalken, Tom had purchased a dragon skin belt that came with an attached loincloth/adjustable kilt yesterday at Hellsprings Eternal.

The belt was pretty cool-looking to Tom’s eyes. It had a large skull buckle and a very stretchy curtain of dragon wing skin that could be unfurled to act as either a loin cloth or a wraparound kilt. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that they had one in his size. The best part was that it had several sealable pouches and some loops for hanging or attaching various things, like a utility belt. He had been somewhat nervous leaving the arrowheads in the cave; now he did not have to, he could take them with him.

“So then, where are we going today?” Rupert asked excitedly.

“Well, per our agreement today is Tizzy’s choice, since the spa was mine,” Boggy said. “He’ll have trouble beating it but…”

Tizzy snorted. “You have to admit the best part of yesterday was thanks to my accursed master!”

“Yes, but not everyone got to go kill liches and dragons. And thanks to my idea, we were able to get a nice relaxing soak afterwards,” Boggy replied.

“I wish I could have gone with you. It would have been great to see Gastropé again, and lich killing sounds like fun.”

“Someone is going to need to explain where those ice dragons came from and how they are related to the dragons here in the Abyss,” Tom said.

“That’s actually a good question,” Boggy said. “They seemed to be all ice—frozen water. They weren’t biological or demonic as far as I could tell.”

“They were fun to chip away at though,” Estrebrius said.

“So where are we going, Tizzy?” Rupert asked, changing the subject.

Tizzy beamed. “Well, I’m not sure there is a formal name for the place, but I call it
crystallus cavernis infra montem fata
. Or sometimes just
fata cavernis
for short. It’s beautiful.”

Rupert was looking puzzled. “Is that wizard tongue? It sort of sounds like it, but not quite.”

Tizzy shook his head. “No, it’s a language called romanus vulgaris.”

Boggy shook his head. “Okay, so what is this place? I’ve never heard of it. Have you, Antefalken?”

Antefalken shook his head. “Never heard of it, which is rather strange.”

Tizzy shrugged. “Well, that’s what I call it anyway. It’s a large series of underground caverns.”

“Caverns?” Talarius asked, sounding annoyed. “You want to get us out of this cave by taking us to see caverns? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be an improvement.”

Tizzy grinned at the knight; the octopod’s red, burning ember-like eyes seemed to glow even more brightly than usual. “Oh, I think you’ll like these caverns. They are truly huge, incredibly beautiful and most of them have crystals dripping from the ceiling and growing from the floors. Rubies, sapphires and diamonds are very abundant.” Tizzy chuckled. “Assuming you ever get back to Astlan, you’re going to need to make amends, and I’m thinking a sizable donation might go a long way to redemption.”

The knight harrumphed. “You cannot buy salvation.” He crossed his arms and sighed. “However, the father church is always in need of resources. I suppose it would be rather ungallant of me to spoil our outing today by complaining; I remove my objection.”

Tizzy chuckled, as did Antefalken.

“We can certainly use some gems when we get back to Astlan. It wasn’t a lot of fun being poor traveling from Gizzor Del to Freehold,” Rupert said.

“We should have bought some bags at Hellsprings Eternal,” Boggy said.

“Do gems work as money in the Courts?” Tom asked Boggy.

Boggy shrugged. “They’re much more valuable in the worlds of men. You can sell them for money in the courts, but they do not have the same sort of value. They are mainly good for jewelry, as decorative items. In Astlan and the other planes, they are a popular way of storing money, but those places don’t have large central banks.”

Tom frowned, “The Courts have a central bank? You mean like one that prints money?” Tizzy nodded. “That seems rather advanced.”

Antefalken shrugged. “Value is a bit different here, and it is tied to power and the ability to do work or get access to physical goods that are useful or wanted. The Abyss is strongly connected to the elemental Plane of Earth and therefore metals and gems are found more easily here than some other planes. The bigger value is in crafting those elements into something useful.” He gestured to Tom’s table and chair.

“So Lilith and Sammael created the central bank to store value, and they issue coins that work as a unit of value to make trade easier,” Boggy continued.

“And that’s what makes them so powerful and feared?” Tom asked.

Boggy and Tizzy shrugged.

Antefalken finally said, “I suppose it’s some of that, but mainly I think it has more to do with the fact that they capture, mercilessly torture and then obliterate and eat the souls of all those who oppose them.”

Tizzy nodded thoughtfully in agreement. “Yeah, that could be it.”

~

Hilda hurriedly made her way up the stairs to Trisfelt’s quarters. She was running late. It had taken the forensics team more time than expected to copy the balling. It was not a mechanism that was widely used in Tierhallon; however, that might change, given the high quality 3D playback. At any rate, they had eventually got it back to her and she’d popped into the forest around the city at the closest safe distance. She should probably drag Danyel and the horses to the launch point and have him attend the horses. Of course, that would be much more obvious than a single woman on foot in a tweed robe exiting in the predawn hours.

She had gotten back to her hotel room only to find the sword, Ruiden, there. The sword was getting impatient with her lack of progress. Being in a hurry to get to brunch with Trisfelt, she’d tried to brush it off but it was quite insistent, so she’d succumbed and given it a brief rundown of what she knew that wouldn’t be too dangerous to let the sword know.

In short, she had ratted out Lenamare as the demon’s master. It was true—not that Lenamare was going to be doing anything about such a fact in the near future. He had been quite clear that he had no desire to try summoning the demon any time soon. She was reasonably certain that Lenamare and Jehenna would be more than capable of dealing with the walking sword on equal footing; something she doubted most mortals could claim.

She knocked on Trisfelt’s doors. It took but a few seconds for the wizard to respond and open the door with a warm smile.

“So good to see you again this late morning, my dear!” Trisfelt welcomed her cheerily.

Hilda smiled and grasped his arm in warm greeting. “So good to see you. I trust you had sufficient time to recuperate this morning?” she asked.

“Mostly… I’m thinking I may need a bit of medicine, perhaps a Bloody Tatania?” The wizard asked, ushering her into his quarters.

“The perfect cure! Which one of us is the healer here?” Hilda asked with a laugh as she came into the chambers. She had only been here briefly previously. It was a decent suite—nothing to compare with Lenamare’s, of course, but still nice. Perhaps the main thing was the lack of personal items. There were numerous professional instruments and quite a few boxes, but overall the suite looked rather unlived in.

Trisfelt must have noticed her looking around. “You’ll have to forgive the bare nature of my quarters. They were just procured for me upon my arrival in Freehold, so I haven’t moved in.” He paused and a look of consternation settled on his face. “And Lenamare managed to vaporize-slash-disintegrate most of my personal possessions back at his school. Some of us didn’t get a lot of room for baggage.” He gave a small grin of mild exasperation.

Hilda grimaced. “I didn’t even think of that. I’m so sorry.”

Trisfelt shook his head, implying it was no big deal. “A great inconvenience, but nothing more. We thaumaturgists are known for being rather nomadic and living off the land, so to speak. Unlike many other wizards, most of our components and tools are readily found in nature.”

He gestured for her to sit down on the couch. “I also have a small cabin—really more of a sort of tree cabin, out in the woods, not that far from Tris.” He sat down himself. “That’s where many of my most personal things are kept. It’s my hideaway, where I go for a respite now and then.”

“A tree cabin?” Hilda asked, puzzled.

Trisfelt had begun mixing Bloody Tatanias from the ingredients and pitchers on the coffee table. He chuckled. “It’s basically a hut built inside the hollow of a very large tree.”

Hilda got a slightly puzzled look on her face. “It must be a very large tree. And I thought you were a thaumaturgist, not a druid,” Hilda joked.

Trisfelt laughed. “No, not a druid. There are a few druids nearby; it is not that far from a satyr encampment. I first encountered the region a decade or so back while researching satyr beer and wine.”

Hilda sat up a bit straighter. “Now you have my attention! Did you find satisfactory refreshment?”

Trisfelt chuckled. “Indeed, some of the best beers in all of Astlan, and I suspect the best non-alvaren wine to be found. Much more grounded with very rich, earthy overtones, and far cheaper but every bit as interesting for one looking for new experiences.”

Hilda looked quite excited. “Well then, I hate to impose, but once this current”—she gestured around, indicating the entire city and region—“whatever it is, is over, you must invite me for a visit!”

Trisfelt smiled brightly. “I would love to do that. It is quite gorgeous out there. Rustic, I fear, but very relaxing.”

“I grew up in a small village in deep woods at the base of the mountains; it was a bit of a backwater.” Hilda smiled. “So rustic is something I’m quite familiar with.” She got a wistful look in her eye as she remembered Rivenrock. She closed her eyes for a moment and then reopened them and smiled, taking the glass Trisfelt offered her.

“Are you okay? You seem suddenly a bit distressed,” Trisfelt asked.

“I’m fine. Simple nostalgia for one’s youth. My village is no longer there, it’s been reclaimed by the forest, so I sometimes get a bit wistful.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Did it just become too hard to make a living?” Trisfelt asked.

Hilda grimaced. “Unfortunately, a necromancer—well, it’s unpleasant and painful.”

Trisfelt was startled. “A necromancer! Oh my goddess, I’m so sorry, I should not have pried!”

Hilda waved him off. “No, no, it’s a perfectly natural question on your part. I’ve come to a small level of peace over it with time.”

“Well, let me change the topic. I have our brunch being served shortly.” He gestured to a dining table set for two. “Waffles with syrup from the region I was just telling you about, as well as ham and a potato-and-egg dish.”

“Mmm,” Hilda said. “Sounds delicious. We should talk more about the balling. Do you wish to do that before, during or after brunch?”

“My only thought would be to reserve discussion when the servants are here,” Trisfelt said.

Hilda nodded. “I agree. I assume they are general palace staff”—Trisfelt nodded—“and no telling who they might share information with.”

“Exactly.”

“I guess my big question is about this Rupert demon. Are you going to tell Lenamare?” Hilda asked.

Trisfelt shuddered. “I think not; at least, not yet. I still have trouble believing it is the same lad. I just do not see how we could have missed it. Telling Lenamare at this juncture would only serve to make him even more paranoid, and I cannot predict how he would react. Generally unpleasant, most likely with initial disbelief, possibly an insulting interrogation of Danyel and the two of us. So, until I can confirm personally, I think I would like that possibility to stay between the three of us.”

Hilda nodded. “I would agree. While I don’t know Lenamare that well, what I do know gives me pause before accusing him of allowing a third or lesser fourth-order demon to sleep under his roof undetected.”

Trisfelt chuckled darkly. “Then you know him as well as any. That is exactly my concern.”

A knock came at the door. “Valet service, My Lord,” a voice from the hall called.

“Come in, come in!” Trisfelt called as he stood and moved towards the door. He glanced back to Hilda. “I hope you brought your appetite; I can smell it already!”

~

“Tizzy, dear chap… you might have mentioned that this place is on the other side of the Abyss!” Boggy complained to Tizzy. “My wings are still regenerating from yesterday’s revelry!”

“What are you complaining about? I’m the one carrying the giant canned meat!” Tizzy retorted.

“It is a bit out there,” Antefalken noted.