Lila left the elf in her room, tied up in the bed with orders not to move if she valued her life. Things being as they were this was far from certain but Lila thought it really wasn't her business if the woman chose to die at the hands of demons. She went out of her window to avoid meeting anyone in the house and shinned down the building's wonderfully ornate and climbable exterior. An imp, which had been dozing atop a bird-limed bust of Xenaxas the Impolite (an Ahriman ancestor), muttered and woke up as she passed it and hopped down after her.
“Where ya going?” it asked in a high, curious voice, dropping from one stone sculpture to another with sparrowlike ease, vestigial wings flicking to keep its balance. It was hardly bigger than a kitten, looked like a scaly monkey, and was surrounded by a small aura of flickering red and orange fire.
“Nowhere,” Lila said grimly, hoping it would go away.
“C'n I come?”
“No.” She moved faster, hand over hand, feet able to see for themselves with sensors in the soles of her boots.
“You look like a woman in need of a familiar.” It danced after her. “Girl like you all alone in the city. Can't come to any good. I'd do it for a nice rate. Make me an offer.”
“Go away before I blow your head off,” Lila said.
“All right. You've twisted me arm. I'll do it for free,” the tiny thing said with a happy smile. “A quick exchange of names and the deal's done.” It rubbed its hands together in proprietorial delight.
“I'm the Queen of Sheba.”
“No you ain't. I met her and she was way prettier than you. Go on. You want me.”
“I really don't.”
“You do. If'n you doesn't why would you be climbing out a window the same moment I choose to wake from a beautiful dream about popping sheep's eyeballs and rubbin' me fingers through the hair of changeling children? That kind of a dream portends you know. Portends a moment of Significance in a demon's life. I open me eyes and there you are. I know you want a familiar because you haven't got one and here you are setting foot out alone in Bathshebat, Grandmother of Infidels and Broodmother of Extremities Beyond Imagination and you just a slip of a little anaetheric girl.”
Lila had both her feet on the pavement now. She nodded calmly and activated the battle system in her right hand. Two guns, and an array of blades enabled themselves, transforming her human limb into a gauntlet of deadly promises. She held this up to the imp, at head level where it stood on the knee of a stone satyr. “Not today thank you.”
The imp clapped its hands and hopped from foot to foot in delight. “Now that's what I call a penknife! I knew you was sent by Hell for me. Just goes to show you have to have faith.” To Lila's surprise it hopped neatly over her hand onto her shoulder and took a thorny-fingered grip of her ear. She could hear but not feel the crackle of fire. “Walk slow, I get seasick.”
“I said no.” Lila reformed her hand and took hold of the imp. It dematerialised just as she felt its tough little form firm up in her grip. The hold on her ear vanished but the imp did not.
“Ah, come on, no need to be such a spoilsport about it,” the imp whined. “I'll see you right. Need me you will, see if you don't. I charge nothing and I'll be worth every penny.”
Even with all her sensors on Lila couldn't detect the imp by any electromagnetic means, but she could still see him on her shoulder and hear his irritating voice through the soft whuff and flap of fiery noises. She gazed at him stonily; rather difficult with her neck twisted around and her eyes at full turn. “What do I have to do to get you to leave me alone?”
“Leave you? Leave you!” shrieked the imp, clutching its chest with both hands. “All this talk of love is breaking me up inside, lady. Just go where you're going and I'll trail along behind you with my self-respect dragging after me in the streets like yesterday's chicken skins. Don't you worry about me though. I can take it. Don't even look back. But when you need me,” he thumped the centre of his chest with one fist, blinking tears of red, his voice hoarse with emotion, “I'll be right there.”
“Money?” Lila said. “Magic?”
“You can't buy love,” the imp said, beseeching her with large, burning eyes. “Don't soil my soul with this talk. It's like you haven't got a heart.”
“What I haven't got is patience for this kind of garbage,” Lila told it. “Get this straight. I don't want you now. I don't want you ever. Get away from me. Scram.”
“Here's what it is,” the imp said in a more amenable tone. “I used to be a big all fire and brimstone kind of hellish lord but I fell foul of the damned Cassiels, providence rot them slowly painfully and eternally, and they put a curse on me so now I'm just an imp without any power at all. I can't even hex. Look…” It waved its hands in a manner that might have indicated some kind of throwing action or spell cast. Little orange fires grew between its fingers, then fizzed out like damp fuses.
“I don't believe you.”
“See, that's part of the curse!” the imp exclaimed dramatically. “Proves my point. Nobody believes me. So I've been on the streets for decades, waiting to find a way out, selling myself to the lowest bidders for any old errands like some kind of bat-sprite. I live out of restaurant dumpsters. And now I have the eyeballs dream and here you are and you are it, baby, you are my ticket and come heaven or high water I'm gonna make you proud of me! Come on, can't you see? We're made for each other.”
“Okay,” Lila said, accepting the first defeat of the war. “You do what you like but at the first opportunity I am ditching you and if I have to end your miserable little life to do it, I will.” She straightened up and put her shoulders back.
“That's my girl,” the imp said with reassuring, paternal tones. There was a sharp pain in her earlobe and tiny claws stuck themselves into her combat vest.
“I hate you so much already I want to spit,” Lila said and spat into the canal as she stood on the Ahriman jetty and watched the early morning light.
“Don't spoil me,” the imp said happily. “Remember I'm a familiar and overfamiliarity with a familiar could be counterproductive to a beautiful working relationship.”
The minotaur who tended the family boathouse came clomping onto the jetty and gazed at her with slumbrous black eyes. He snorted in the direction of his gondolas, “You want a ride out?”
“No thanks,” Lila said. “I'll walk.” She hesitated. “On second thought, do you know how I can get rid of this imp?”
“Oh my heart!” shrieked the imp, staggering on Lila's shoulder. “The things she says!”
The minotaur licked his muzzle with a long purple tongue and shook his heavy head, scratching at his sides with both cloven hands. “They are like the flies, mostly harmless, always irritating. You had better learn to ignore them.”
“Fabulous,” Lila said and scanned her internal map of Bathshebat. With a purposeful, determined tread she set out for the Souk. She was aware of Tath only as a kind of grinding discomfort in the centre of her chest. He knew what was going on and hated it but daren't uncurl even enough to speak to her with the imp in such close proximity. It was all just wonderful. She consoled herself with the idea that surely in the Souk there would be someone who was good at getting rid of imps. The thought cheered her up so much she found herself asking, “So, what are you the imp of?”
“Imp of?” the imp repeated incredulously. “I am a lord of the infernal and master of the aetheric sciences, not some wharf rat of minor torment. I am not the imp of anything. I told you but do you listen? No. Just like all the others.”
“So, you're not the imp of anything. But you are an imp.”
“For the time being, yes, it looks that way but looks are not everything. I may have been stripped of all the powers I have save that of my good looks and charm but I also possess all my knowledge and I was an old, old demon, almost starting ossification when this happened so I know a lot, baby, and that will come in very handy, you'll see. For instance, you are best to duel on the Harbinger Bridge unless you are facing a withering demon in which case you must make them go outside the city bounds to Wulsingore. Never forget that in a hurry. No ma'am. Why, I bested the Dread Rage Brutorian Malsotis on this very—”
“Not the imp of drivel?” Lila interrupted, striding across the bridge at ever greater pace, dodging the beautifully dressed demon traders who had prime site stalls ranged upon the broad span.
“So rude,” the imp sighed sentimentally. “Almost like my own daughter. Now, on this street there used to be a whole frontage of the most beautiful late Rageblind architecture that was utterly breathtaking even though of course it was impossible to view directly without a slide into the most foul temper…I say, are you heading towards the Souk?”
“Looks like it.”
The imp pinched her earlobe between two claws.
“Ow! By god you'll have a painful death if you do that again!” Lila hissed at it.
“We should discuss this,” the imp said in a tone of command. “Turn left here and go up to the second floor. The cafe is rather foul underfoot with roach and asp-nit feasting upon the droppings from the tables but the tea is first rate. Have mint tea, keep your shoes on, and listen to me. It will take but a moment.”
“I doubt that,” Lila muttered but the pain in her ear was intense and she knew she would never hear the end of it or might possibly lose part of the ear if she didn't so she turned left as instructed, went through a greasy beaded curtain and up a flight of rickety steps to a room every bit as filthy as promised.
Three older demons were hunched in the corner, whispering and fussing over some cards and other items on a low table. They all smoked and were chewing some kind of herby stuff out of a jar, taking handfuls at regular intervals and spitting the result into an iron pot where it bubbled and gave off low vapours. They snorted this into their nostrils in a strict turn-taking round. As she took a seat at the least repulsive spot and feigned no interest in them they ruffled their feathers and spiked their quills but otherwise ignored her. Rough straw scattered on the floor seethed with insect activity. There was a strong smell of burnt frying fat, incense, and espresso.
“Well?” she muttered, watching the server appear from a hole in the ceiling. It was a spider form the size of a small dog, and clicked quietly across the roof upside down, extending a tattered menu to her on a long sticky strand of silk. Most of the hairs on its thick legs were singed and although it had no facial expressions she could detect among its eight eyes its body wore a strangely immaculate white band of apron that seemed to speak of a kind of hygienic pride. She took the menu and tugged it free. The line broke and clung to her fingers. She tried to wipe it off on the table but it just stuck more.
“It's enchanted. It'll evaporate in a minute,” the imp said confidently. “Mint tea. And I'll have the double shot with just a dash of mare's milk.”
But Lila was engrossed in the menu suddenly and not because it was stuck to her hand. “What is Essence of Humanity?”
“They make it by mage-pressing grave dirt with fresh spring water. You don't need to worry.” The imp called up to the server, “She wants mint tea. I'm going for the double Arabica, if you don't have mare's milk then yak or bat will do.”
“Milks of the world,” Lila read, “see specials board…” She looked at the board. “Harp Seal milk?”
“Too fattening. Also it tastes of fish which does nothing for coffee.”
“Milk of Mother's Tears…?”
“Look, never mind all that. The thing is you want to go to the Souk and the other thing is that I want to prove I'm really who I say I am…”
“You didn't say who you were.”
“If I could say my name I wouldn't be a damned imp, would I?” the imp snapped. “I have to get my name. And you have…some business that's probably important to someone somewhere so I was thinking I help you, you help me, match made in hell. You need someone who knows what they're doing around demons and you don't have that. I need someone…I need someone…so there we are. Perfection.”
Lila sighed and shook her head, “I'm not telling my business to you so you can sell it all around town. Do I look crazy?”
“Yes, frankly. You have got an imp on your shoulder, and everyone knows that their entire purpose in life is to drive people crazy.”
“With lots of lies. Which are pathetic, by the way.”
“Just one shot. One. I'll get you something. Do something. Say something that will show you I'm telling you the truth.”
“Nah, you'll just do it enough to convince me and then stab me in the back. Your entire MO is old news to me,” Lila said with conviction as the server returned, via the door this time, and slid a tray off its pristine back onto the table. It bore a glass of mint tea, steaming, and a pot of coffee with a tiny cup and a small pitcher of milk.
“You see. I bet you're never usually that suspicious of anyone without some magical extra winding up your nerves. Of course you won't believe me, that's part of my curse.”
“You're an imp. I don't believe you because of that.”
“Sure, sure. Taste the tea. It's all good.” The imp waited and Lila, because she had nothing to drink for hours, decided to try it. She put her finger into it first, in spite of the heat, for a quick analysis. It was tea. She raised the glass to her lips.
“Anyway if I was a real imp I'd have this hotline into your worst neuroses and be telling you that your boyfriend is too good for you, you'll never know the half of what goes on behind your back at work because it's in everyone else's interests to keep you ignorant and Tartarus will be under an ice sheet by the time you manage to conquer your fear of being alive. In the meantime you'll waste a lot of energy agonising about your old life and supporting your own denial with relentless activities that seem to be focused on work but really are just distraction tactics with vaguely work-related payoffs. Your heart is concealing something you'd really rather not face for reasons you don't want to look at so you'll spend what's left of your time keeping a lid on that whilst convincing yourself rationally that it's for everyone else's good that you do as you're told, don't ask too many questions, and play at being strong in situations that seem dangerous but don't matter to you so you can fool other people about how well you're doing. Of course, you know very well that you're turning into the biggest sell-out of them all.
“In your future alcoholism or other forms of addiction await you for when you get bored of playing at supergirl. You will become a cynical, bitter old woman who can only relate to small pets in order to avoid your intimacy issues, which by then will be of apocalyptic proportions and your loneliness will only be alleviated by certain great pieces of music which will also intensify its piquancy for reasons you never understand. There may be some dallying with literature or other arts as a way of faking contact with others of your kind but at a remove that allows your fantasies to remain untouched whilst never bringing you close to the ugly reality of genuine connections with the flawed and annoying monstrosities that are other people. You will die alone, like the rest of us, and making sense of your life in order to paint yourself the martyr will be the biggest fake ever hung in the big gallery of retrospective narrative lies and you'll know that in your final moments and in that second everything you have struggled so hard to hold onto will vanish like smoke on the wind but it will be too late.
“See, if I was a real imp, that's what I'd be saying.”
Lila spluttered and swallowed a mouthful that was too hot and then put her glass down. The tea was really good. Her tongue was burned. She took a long breath over it, trying to cool it down. Tath spun in her chest; he was a little sparkly, like a gulp of champagne and Lila had learned to recognise that as laughter. There was a sharp pain under her breastbone that had nothing to do with him. For a moment she felt intense rage at the pair of them, little parasites, but then a cold calm took hold of her.
“Now let's get one thing clear,” she said. “My minions don't gang up on me. My minions don't tell me the uncomfortable truth or the comfortable truth or any kind of stuff like that to make my life harder. My minions help me to the bitter end of their bitter little lives or they get sent through the nine circles to the Infinite Pit by any means I can find and, by golly gosh, if you don't think I have the balls to hold a grudge beyond all reasonable limits, demon, then you really don't have two powers to rub together.”
The imp let go of her ear and pattered down her arm, balancing on her hand as it reached for the coffee pot and poured itself a cup. It disdained the milk it had ordered and knocked back the scalding brew with a single jerk of its head. Espresso dribbled down its chin, “Now that's what I'm talkin' bout, baby,” it said with gusto. “You and me. Match made in hell. Had the eyeballs dream. Spoken like a real devil, my lovely. Let's hit the Souk. I'm itching for a battle of wits with those jessies.”
Minions ?
I didn't notice you protesting my valour. So can it.
Lila got up suddenly. The imp reached for another coffee, almost fell from her hand, and scuttled back up to its place. A sharp pain reported a fresh grip on her ear. She tried not to let the eye on that side tear up.
In the corner one of the large demons hawked and spat into the pot. Thick purple billows came from it and his companion sniffed deeply, reeled for a moment, and then fell senseless onto the floor. The other two cackled and scraped piles of small change from the table into their hands.
“Wait till he shrinks,” one slurred.
“Yeah, so you can carry him out first…” the other said. “No way. I buy the percentage.”
“Myeh, what you think he's good for?”
“Can't tell until…ah wait…”
The demon on the floor began to shrink. Nothing about it altered except that its breathing slowed and it got smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
Lila watched with unstoppable fascination. The demon, which had been just about her size, continued to diminish until it was no larger than a salt shaker at which point it took on a polished kind of sheen and a stony appearance.
“Crap,” said the quilled demon. “Fucking chess set is what. You can have fifty-fifty on him. Think he'd at least have done for garden statuary, demon of his bearing.”
“He must have been lying all these years about that witchery business. I said he was a bluffer. Gah, the money I've given him for enchantments. All up in smoke now, and I'll be lucky if we can get enough paint on him to call him a bishop.” The feathered demon picked up the pot of bubbling mixture and flung it across the room where it splattered on the wall with a clang. The pot rolled away and the server came in and chittered in a high voice, spitting venom.
The demons attempted to get up and run for it but the server snared them in a sticky web until they paid up some sum. The quilled demon scooped up the frozen figure of the shrunken one, shook off a couple of roaches, and stuffed it into a pouch at its belt. “I'll do the fixings and sell him. Maybe there'll be some tips on eBay about the kind of things the humans like to buy. See you tomorrow for the cash up.”
They shuffled out, weaving and bumping each other, unsteady on their feet and cursing frequently as they clutched at the walls for support.
Lila watched this without moving.
“True friends,” the imp said on her shoulder with nostalgic longing. “Lovely that was. Just lovely.” It had a quaver in its voice. “Oh, one more thing. We can't just roll around town with me riding here like some ordinary pestilence talking into your ear or nobody will trade doohickey with you. And I think rubies will go nicely with that big red streak in your hair. Nice touch that. Shows off your creative side.”
The casual pinprick pain in Lila's earlobe became a swift, savage biting agony. “Oww! What the eff…” Her hand snapped up to her shoulder but the imp was gone, not even into its cold flame form. It was just gone. There was a cold, cut-sided stone set into her ear, like an earring stud. It pierced through and held at the back with a similar-size rock. Her fingers came away bloody. She could hear the imp almost as well as before.
“So, what are we bidding for?” it perked.
“Information,” Lila said. “When the elf Zal Ahriman became a demon something happened here to him. I want to know what and how. And when I know, I'm going to do it too.”
“Well that's easy,” the imp whispered. “Every demon in the seven cities knows how you do that. It's the one legend of our world that never disappoints. You don't need the Souk at all, unless you need magic for something else. All you need to do is go through Hell.”
Zal had gone about a hundred metres when he heard a familiar voice behind him and the sound of light fey feet running.
“Hey! Wait up.”
He turned, grateful the back street behind the hotel was deserted except for an automated trash-collection bot doing the round of the bins. Poppy was bright, vivacious, sensationally dressed and together they could attract more attention in two minutes than a full-scale car crash at a city centre junction. His understated clothes and broad-brimmed hat, chosen to make him seem unremarkable in Otopia, were pointless beside her resplendent rainbow of clothing and her flaring green hair.
He waited for her, a soft spot under his heart always open to her in spite of the fact he found her over the top and she had tried to kill him on at least one occasion. She had a great voice.
She paused the regulation metre away from him. “You're going to see Lila, right?”
Zal made a face and sighed. She was sharp, despite having extreme blonde tendencies. He nodded.
Poppy bit her lip and drifted slightly across the ground, her invisible wings rendering her virtually weightless. She held something out to him in her hand. He took it. “What's this?”
The small packet was wrapped in a silk cloth and unwound to show a hammered silver pendant in the shape of a spiral attached to a grey silk ribbon which glimmered with the faint purple gleams of magical marks. It was a delicate object and looked as though the spiral should easily slip off the ribbon although Zal suspected that no earthly force and certainly not one as obvious as gravity would separate it from its band. It had a weight that was heavy to his andalune, light on his flesh hand.
“Just something I got her,” Poppy said. “Kind of to say sorry from me and Vidia, you know, for the whole nearly drowning you both thing.”
Zal folded the cloth again and put it in his pocket. “I'll give it to her.”
“Don't be late back with Sorcha, me and V need some money.” This statement came with the kind of offhand casualness Zal knew signalled great importance.
“I can give you a loan…”
“Nah nah, just be back on time, cut the track, that's good. Oh, and Boom asked me to give you this.” She pulled a crumpled piece of hotel notepaper out of the back pocket of her trousers and held it towards him. She wouldn't meet his eye.
Zal flicked it from her grasp and read the scratchy pencilled handwriting. “What is this shit?”
“She wanted to keep true to her musical principles and…” Poppy began with rolling eyes and pulling her mouth into awkward shapes as she delivered the bad news.
Zal read aloud, “…will not record sub-vaudeville neo-romantic diva disco for the sake of a quick buck…spoiling the pure spirit of the hip-hop tradition…slave to corporate greed…less the spirit of punk than the seepage of neo-fascist marketing spunk…back to my roots in the souldance houses of Bay City…leaving your corrupting influence for the good of the genre…” He took a deep breath, “That superficial, ponced-up, jealous little two-bit hack programmer!”
Poppy bit both lips. “She was pretty good as a DJ.”
“Well, screw her. What does she know about souldance Mode-X crossover anyway? The closest she gets to creative is sampling tracks out of the Otopia Tree Library Least Listened archive. I can get a better sound out of a demon technician than some bloody human. Good. Another damn reason to go back. Tell Jolene I'll find a replacement. Tell her I'll find two!”
“Zal…” Poppy began in a patient tone, clearly about to ask for some understanding in what was a major moment of band history. They both knew Boom was good and that she was pretentious and that she was gone and this would be hard to get over.
“No.” He balled up the note and threw it on the ground. “We had this out. She was going to have as much leeway as she wanted to create a whole new sound and she bottled out of it. I don't want this bullshit about creative freedom and the history of fucking music. Let her go back to working clubs and selling her sad little story.”
“The thing is, Zal…”
He looked into Poppy's smile-to-cover-the-story face and her awkward manner. A slow, weary sinking feeling spread across him. “You agree with her, don't you?”
“No, not exactly. But we were all, you know, feeling like it was bad to get attached to Sorcha's image too much and you know you were absent for the tour date and that was really hard for us…”
“Enough excuses. Are you going to bail out too? And who else? Do I or do I not remember you just telling me to get back fast to make some bucks for whatever stupid problems you and V have got yourselves into now? So it looks to me like whatever you think you're stuck with it.”
“No no no. We're fine. We're all ready to do it. It's fine.” Poppy backed away from him, her hands held up and waving in front of her in airy little gestures. “We just…we're worried, Zal. About you. That's all.”
“Worry about yourself!” he snapped. “Worry about finding another DJ and worry about the money because I am not your damn problem.” He spun on his heel and walked fast away from her, seething. For once he was glad there was no chance anyone could contact him via one of the ubiquitous Berries that the others used as electronic lifestyle aides. The worst part was that Poppy was right to call him on his absence. Even so, it was stupid elitist crap to say that any kind of music couldn't be good, no matter what style it was or what it was made with. Anyway, she was double wrong because disco was fantastic. He'd find some demon to help, someone who really understood the way all the grooves fit together, and had it branded in their soul like him.
His irritation made him more bad tempered, his awareness that he was bad tempered made him exasperated, his exasperation made him restless, and his restlessness pointed only one way. He walked the six blocks of back streets to where the warehouses of Ikea opened to the loading bays and climbed the wire fence onto the property. There was a shiver point so strong under the building that he could sense it even without trying. It lay along the same faultline that the recording studio in Bay City stood beside but here there was only the thinnest skin between Demonia and Otopia and a running torrent of free aether in I-space. Demonia's border, like the wall of a giant cell, softly billowed up from the aether depths at regular intervals with magmatic slowness. By the time Zal had walked in, unnoticed, to the self-serve area where the endless cabinets were racked, it had risen on its ten-minute turnaround and was practically right there beneath his feet. The boxes and pallets of furniture shimmered and a couple of bits were stolen by demonic fingers, right before his eyes. They vanished from the stock without a whisper. It was pure devilment as no demon would be seen dead with mass-produced items in their homes.
Zal opened his hands, released his andalune body to the floor where the borders were thinnest, and opened what he thought of as the inner fire in his soul. This was not a literal thing. Whoever you were, to get to Alfheim you needed some kind of portal. To get to Thanatopia you had to be dead. To get into Zoomenon you had to summon and find a spot where elementals liked to gather in sufficient numbers to help you out but to get into Demonia, especially if you were a demon, you only had to stand close to it and tune in to the ever-present beat of hedonistic joy in your heart—Demonia's music that was never out of key and never entirely out of reach.
He had the brief sensation of falling. It was always like that, like the dream where you step off the pavement into an unexpected drop and there's a heartstopping moment of being off-balance and out of control. It lasted a little longer than the dream, but not very much. He smelt brimstone and the sweet reek of rose-scented ifriti flowers, blooming with their love-drenched and fatal nectar saturating each petal and suffusing the air around them. Otopian Ikea gave way to Zhanzabar Walk's gardens. Next to Zal two sturdy horned demons piled their looted flatpacks onto a wheelbarrow and hurried off.
“No scented candles?” said one with disappointment.
“They're not close enough to the shiver point,” the other repeated in the tones of someone who has repeated it a thousand times.
Zal stepped quickly out of range of the flowering bush and quickly stripped off his jacket and shirt, allowing the flare on his back to be visible. He folded the clothes and carried them with him in one hand until a flitting sprite in the family colours came by, attuned to seek out higher ranks and offer service. He gave it the clothing and told it to send word that he was coming to stay at home for a few days.
The sprite took the parcel of cloth in its long fingers and rippled its scales and whiskers with purplish delight. “Very good, sir. I will have your things set out. Will you be dining at home?”
“Yes. As long as the guest Lila Black is attending.”
“We expect her to be there. No events are on the schedule for this evening. Drinks are served on the terrace at eight. Shall I alert your wife that you wish her company? She is at the house in Tartarus presently…”
“No, no,” Zal said. “Don't disturb her. But if Zarzaret is in town, I want to see him.”
“As you wish.” The sprite flew away on its dragonish wings, bumping up and down with the weight of its burden.
The smell of the canals, thick and rotting, mingled with the far more pleasant scents of the gardens and the wafting traces of various spicy foods in the warm morning air. Zal took a deep breath and felt his ears prickle with the amount of waste aether drifting about from all the sorcery that burned on day and night in every house and corner. It was almost the antithesis of Alfheim but just as abundant in its way. Not far off, among a glade of deathflame trees, fire elementals spiralled like gnats in the thin branches. The blue hiss and flare of methane burn danced in the heart of the black flowers, carbon petalled. White and blue fire sprites darted between them, sipping, while their larger cousins whirled together into vortices of lazy fire, licking on the tar sap that oozed from the flat rubbery bark. Black smokes plumed lazily here and there.
At the centre of the gathering Zal, adept in fire, could feel the beginnings of a firestorm building. The outer elementals were whistling to their airy counterparts to beckon drafts into their midst, promising the lift of heat and a ride up through the muggy daytime into the cool, pristine heights of the upper atmosphere in return for a concentrated influx of oxygen. Between the roots of the oldest trees small pools of petroleum fractions shivered and hazed the air just beneath the fire blazers' gathering tribe.
Events like this were reasonably rare and fire blooms even more so, since he could never see one in Otopia short of wantonly loitering around fire stations waiting to be called. In Alfheim it meant volcano walking. But Demonia was rich with hydrocarbons and life-forms which processed the same. He thought it couldn't hurt just to take a look and moved closer. Other adept demons, attracted by the same sense of an impending surge, drifted in from the sky and across from various entry points into the park from the city. Two of them from the same Talent path as Zal, from the Mousa, had brought pyre flutes together with bellows-pump.
“Long-ears,” said one of them to Zal, even though his own ears were at least as large beneath his curling horns. “Longtime we not see you in the Guildhalls, you been missing us, heh?”
Under the demon's attention and with proximity to the others, Zal felt the flare on his back grow warm and begin to blossom through his skin. Beside him the rest attuned themselves to one another and to the tone of the fires dancing in the trees, changing gently from reds and yellows to the hotter fires of blue and white. A surge of energy, the first ripple of a promise, went around them, passed from one to another like a torch. It lit their flares more brightly for the instant as it moved and with it the mages in the group began muttering some incantation to the elementals, attracting their attention.
The demon who had spoken to Zal produced a wind whistle and began to blow it. Compared to the tiny numbers of such beings in Otopia the gathering of elementals was shocking with its suddenness and ferocity. Within seconds the wind was strong enough to require an effort to withstand. Zal's hair whipped around, blinding him and lashing his face. He heard the soft fluttering of fire in the glade become a hiss and then, as the pools lit with a soft explosion a wave of heat physically pushed him back into the onrushing wind so he was caught between the flame and the air. The hiss became a ferocious roar. He and the other watching demons were suddenly all sucked forwards to the blaze by the backdraft, the mischievous hands and tendrils of air elementals tugging at them in passing as they hurtled into the heart of the flame.
They did not burn. The fire caused the natural fire of their flares to ignite and spread out into sheets of incandescent energy; aether channelled into flame, as individual as a fingerprint and as harmless to the one enveloped in it as his or her own skin. It was the fire that touched the living flames of the elementals as they gathered and united into a single storm entity, fuelled on the energy of the demons and the sap of the trees, lent power by the sharing of the air.
A spinning column of fire shot up into the sky. The demons with wings rode on it as high as they could and those without, including Zal, floated in the rotating pool at its base like swimmers, each barely visible to the others through curtains of blazing plasma. From their places the musicians flung their pyre flutes outward and down where their enchanted bases sent ceramic roots down into the fuel source. Air and fuel mixed and shot up through the pipes, sounding two burring notes of continuous burn at pitches calibrated by demon technicians to induce an even greater waveform for maximum combustion. The two tubes vibrated with the incredible sound, there as invitation for the god of Fire to use as a voice.
Since his rebirth Zal had not experienced anything like it. Once the burn had reached a tipover point the energy for which he had been only the conduit from his aether connection to the fire suddenly reversed flow. Now the power of the mighty elemental and his fellow demons began to charge him with enormous, astonishing force. The moment it began to happen he became simultaneously aware of two things. One was that this was exactly what he hoped would happen when he first noticed the elementals and pretended he was only curious about them. The other was that it was far more powerful than he had imagined and there was a third thing—he realised he was out of practice and couldn't handle it.
For a few brief moments the hit was joyous and a merciful release from the near-sterility of Otopian life. He couldn't imagine what had possessed him to leave an aetheric region for such a place. Nothing could compare to the incredible vitality of this! And then it was too much and what had been ecstasy became pain in his nerves and pain in his andalune as the vibrations—frequencies not natural to its ordinary elven system—began to disrupt its normal flow. He felt fire from the flare begin to eat its way through from the realm of the aetheric into his flesh body. If he did not discharge it in some way it could easily burst across the gap into a different form, its physical form which was more than able to burn him to a cinder.
Inside the vortex there was nothing to do with the energy but create more flame. He realised he had to get out and then his thoughts became a blur of roaring, singing noise and a voice said from the fire, “Sing for me.”
He opened his eyes to the flat azure skies he knew well. Beneath him was hot sand and the dry air was hazed with shivering mirages and the colours of half-formed things.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck,” he said and let his head fall back down to the ground.
He was in Zoomenon.