Today would be different. Enough time had passed that she felt reasonably confident that she could get him to tell her what had happened.
When she approached his chambers, Lilith saw the dozens of Foot Guard, arranged in a square formation that completely blocked the corridor and barred anyone, save herself, Eligor, and Zoray, from entering. Saluting, they opened the door, and she stepped into Sargatanas' private world.
He had pulled up a heavy chair before his wide opened window and was seated, looking out over Adamantinarx, a pale shape against a dark background. His city was now a nexus for the disenfranchised of Hell, and even from this height he could not have failed to see the steady flow that entered it.
"There is little or no difference," he said without turning, "between my rebellion and his."
"My lord?"
"Lucifer. His rebellion. And mine. We are both responsible for what we started."
"Yes. But surely you can see the differences."
"What if they're not so clear?" He took a deep breath. "What I can see is the destruction of those around me because of my own selfish goals."
She looked at him and felt the radiance of sadness that seemed to emanate from him. "This isn't a selfish cause. His was."
Sargatanas remained still. An ash-laden wind was whipping up, and the banners below were beginning to flap.
Lilith stood next to him, watching the city as it grew less distinct for the encroaching ash.
"It's Valefar. His loss is making you question all that you're attempting: that much is clear. He wouldn't want that."
The demon pursed his lips, the agitation clearly written upon his face. She suddenly realized—amazed after all these weeks that she had not seen it—that he was no longer shifting his form. While he was still very much a demon, his whitened body was as stable as the chair he sat upon. How could I have missed something so obvious? What else has changed within him?
"What was it like?"
"What?"
"In the Shrine."
His mouth opened as if to speak and he hesitated. She saw him take his eyes away from the window and look down.
"I was ... upon my knees praying." He shook his head slowly. "Lilith, I prayed so hard, first for him ... for Valefar ... and then for me. And it was then that the floor shook. I thought it was a response to such selfishness."
"Eligor and I felt that. I think the entire palace did as well," she said, immediately sorry she had interrupted him.
"Then there was a brilliance, a living whiteness, that seemed to descend like the furious fall of a sword blade. It hit me so hard, Lilith. And when it did, I thought it the purest anger I've ever known. Directed solely at me. It only touched me for an instant, but even in that span I felt it change ... to the purest imaginable balm. Suddenly my mind was flooded with the Above; I could smell it, see it, hear it ... even taste it. It was like awakening after dreaming of blackness and decay and seeing ... my home." He paused. "I'm sorry, I can't truly tell you."
Lilith smiled. He was right; she could only imagine.
The ash cloud was rising, making its inevitable way up to the lofty heights of the palace towers, and Lilith moved to close the open windows. There were a dozen casements to latch, and as she began she heard Sargatanas rise from his seat and start to close them at the far end of the room.
She glanced at him surreptitiously and saw him pausing, holding his wounded side. Without thinking she went to him, and for a moment, a long, silent moment, they looked into each other's eyes. She had never seen eyes like his, made angelic by the change; past the bony brows and white lids they were deep wells of liquid copper flecked with tiny specks of azure—quite beautiful, she thought. But, more than that, it was the sadness, the inward-reaching longing, she saw within them that she had never seen before. Even the eyes of Lucifer, which she had fallen into, had held more anger than anything else.
Impulsively, keeping her eyes on Sargatanas', she reached out and touched him, running her pale fingers down his steaming forearm and feeling the heat of his flesh and bone. The touch burned but in a way that sent a thrill through her. She saw his eyes widen fractionally, but he did not pull away, and she put her other hand upon the hand that covered his wound and slowly, purposefully, pulled him to her. She heard a release of breath, deep and hollow, and suddenly, with a fervor that surprised her, he crushed her to him, closing his eye and wrapping his heavy arms around her.
They stood motionless, holding on to each other in Hell's first embrace of love, for what Lilith deemed the most wonderful eternity she had spent. They were both unique yet alike, alone yet together. And Lilith knew that, for her, Hell was forever changed.
I am, indeed, in a new world.
* * * * *
They lingered upon Sargatanas' disheveled pallet, in a room made hazy by the steam of their lovemaking. Lilith lay partially atop him like a dismounting rider, her nude body looking like highly polished ivory, slick with perspiration. He drowsed beneath her, his huge hand playing unconsciously with her sweat-tangled hair, his words few but endearing. The heat of him that was still spreading upward from between her legs suffused her entire body, warming her. Lilith had never felt more content. Her mind, enervated by the intensity of him, ranged back to those most ancient of memories, of the Man for whom she was created and of lost Lucifer, and she knew that neither could compare. Sargatanas' yearning hunger had been obvious and his skill amazing; she had found him nothing less than sublime in his passion. She had exhilarated in his power.
It was odd, she thought distantly, how so much about her existence seemed to center upon sex. The intent of her very creation had been about it. Her own Fall had indirectly been because of it. Her millennia of imprisonment had been to exploit it. With Lucifer it had always been about Lucifer. But with Sargatanas it seemed different; there was an equality about it, a give-and-take, a sense that she was someone, in how attentive he had been. She ascribed this parity, in part, to her having reached out to him. And that, she thought smiling faintly, she would never regret.
She watched his scarred and broken chest rise and fall, saw the fire that lay within his torn breast—where his heart should have been—fade and glow, fanned with each breath. And she closed her eyes, thinking of the possibilities. She thought about what Hell would be like for her if he succeeded in his dream, with him absent forever. Or—and this was a pleasantly guilty thought—if he faded, what it might be like if he were not to leave.
DIS
A single week in a thousand-mouthed screaming-room at the mercy of a pack of Scourges had wrought changes upon Agares that would never be erased. When Adramalik saw him he straightened, tightening his jaw, for the former Prime Minister, once so proper and refined, could no longer stand as he once had. Nor would he breathe or speak as he once had. In fact, the Chancellor General was not sure, looking at him, whether on a cursory glance he could ready even be mistaken for a demon anymore. Which had been exactly what Adramalik had recommended his peer's punishment be. Adramalik now thought his own punishment, as severe as it was, was nothing in comparison to Agares' suffering. Of one thing he was certain: Agares would never be Prime Minister again.
Naked, he shuffled sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours, ahead of Adramalik, trailing a bloody train of flayed skin as he moved into Beelzebub's Rotunda. Agares had difficulty traversing the floor; pattering through its ankle-deep pools of blood and chunks of half-consumed meat made him strain and contort his twisted body so much that he occasionally let out wincing shrieks of pain. Apart from the very apparent rearrangement of his joints, every internal organ, feathered in exposed capillaries, protruded through innumerable holes in his body in a way that Adramalik could only think of as decorative. The whips and tongs and hooks had been very creatively applied.