Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan) (27 page)

Red-golden light shown through the
Corinthian pillars to Exador's right.  Exador had just teleported into the entranceway pavilion of his erstwhile allies.  The pavilion was neo-Grecian in Exador's mind.  Large white marble Corinthian columns, twenty feet high supporting a marble roof. 

To his left, about forty feet away was a solid marble wall with a single large curtained entranceway in the middle.  Ahead of and behind him were more large colum
ns separating the pavilion from the outside.  The outside was pleasant, if a bit unusual.  The sky was a  translucent red, streaked with golden strands of clouds.  No sun was visible from Exador's position. 

The ground around the pavilion was covered with a wide variety of pleasant looking, if scrub like, plants.  The soil was  a reddish brown in color.  Actually, to Exador's mind, it reminded him of images he'd seen of the place the columns came from, except it was all seen through rose colored glasses.  Even the sporadic local fauna, reminded him of the images, there were some people and also a number of reddish, vaguely demonic looking centaurs roaming the grounds, apparently tending the plants.

Not caring to waste any more precious time admiring the admittedly artificial landscape, Exador proceeded through the gold silk curtains draping the single entranceway.  Through the entranceway was another large chamber, apparently some form of antechamber.  Along each of the walls were more columns, similar to those outside.  Directly opposite the portal through which he'd just come, was a set of closed double doors.  To the left and right of the large doorway stood minor demons of about the second order.  Exador marched directly towards them.  They came to attention as he approached.  Apparently, however, they were expecting him, as the one on the left opened the doors before him. 

Exador kept right on marching, ignoring the demons, and went into the room beyond.  As he stepped into the room, the doors closed silently behind him.  This room was smaller, but by no means
could it be considered 'cozy' by human standards.  It was approximately twenty feet on a side and square, with no other visible exits.  The floor had an inlaid geometric design of black and white marble with inlaid gold.  Exador quickly assessed the design, and determined it was not used in any sort of magical trap.  Turning his attention from the floor, he noted the walls had relief carvings of people and animals doing all sorts of things, including coupling.  In the center of the room was a large marble table, with no chairs around it. 

Across the table from Exador was the first of his 'allies' and to the left side of the table was his second.  Both, were most unusual looking allies.  The one straight ahead was obviously male, of
gigantic proportions.  He was approximately nine feet tall and built literally like a god.  His skin was a brilliant bronze color that almost glowed of its own accord.  His eyes were a piercing, brilliant deep black, with almost no pupil.  For clothing, he wore more jewelry than actual clothes.  His actual clothing was limited to a silk loincloth held up by an intricately carved, large golden belt.  On his head and shoulders he wore what his ally described as a 'pharaoh’s crown.'  What exactly a pharaoh was, Exador did not know, but presumably, it somehow tied in with the landscape. 

In any
event, it was a gold crown that streamed down the side of the man's head onto his chest, with a large gold striped white cloth covering the rest of his head.  In addition the man was wearing golden wrist and ankle bands and a large pendent with a truly massive ruby in it.  Not to be outdone by his own looks, the man, who's ego was probably even greater than Lenamare's, had styled himself Ramses Maximus.  Exador, knew of course that it was completely  fictitious. He had little patience for the panopolistic games Ramses Maximus liked to play, and so simply called the man RM, which tended to annoy him.

His other ally, the one to RM's right, was not quite so ostentatious in attire or attitude, but was, in fact even more striking.  She, and she was unquestionably a she, was only six feet tall, but her appearance was even more radical than RM's.  For one thing, she was completely nude, except for an exquisite golden
collar that while good sized, was not out of proportion to her body. 

Bess, as she liked to be called, was the perfect figure of the ideal, shapely woman.  Perfectly proportioned and completely sleek.  Her skin color however, was ebony.  Not ebony as in human black, but true ebony.  She looked like an ebon statue.  Her very skin was shiny
and smooth like a statue yet incredibly flexible and lithe.  Her skin however, was not her most unusual feature.  Her most unusual feature was her head.  Bess, had the head of a cat.  Or rather, Bess had the head of an ebon statue of a cat.  She had no hair like a cat, but rather her face appeared to be that of a cat's carved in ebony, with small pointy cat ears on the top of her head. 

Both of his allies' forms were as artificial as their calling names and as artificial as the grounds around them.  Exador had little patience for such game
s.  He much preferred shape changing others rather than himself.  Unfortunately, sometimes one had to take one's allies as they came.  At least until they could be disposed of.  Exador braced himself for the question he knew was to come, and looked Ramses Maximus in the eyes.

The question came, however, from Bess.  "So, Lenamare got away?  We thought you said you could take him with no problem?"

"I said," Exador corrected, turning his eyes to Bess, "that I could take him.  That it might take time, but in the end, I could take him and get the book."

"It appears, however, that he's gotten away from you," stated RM.

"It appears," Exador retorted, sarcastically, "that he took out most of OUR army, and escaped with the book."

"Yes, that was most annoying."  Bess purred.

"He's made it to Freehold, and is petitioning against me in the courts.  The petitioning is just a stalling game, to give him time in the relative safety of Freehold."

"Time?" asked Ramses.

"Time to figure out how to open the book.  He needs to hole up some place that he thinks is safe from me, to give himself time to study the book.  By going through the legal process, he has good reason to be at Freehold, and further, to try and keep me and mine away from him while there."

"So you don't think he's succeeded in opening the book then?"  asked Bess, staring at him intently.

"Would we still be standing here discussing this if he had?"  responded Exador.

"Perhaps," interjected Ramses, thoughtfully, "it might take him a bit of time to get around to us.  With his ego, he'd likely try to fry bigger fish than us first."

"Maybe, but I doubt he's so insane as to start out without some practice first.  And if he had started, the Courts would have been in a state of total uproar."  Exador countered.  "If he'd succeeded with someone higher up than ourselves, he wouldn't lay low about it, and if he'd failed, he'd be dead."

"What about this fourth order he pulled out of nowhere?  Are you sure this isn't his practice."  Bess asked.

"No, it's legitimate.  He either had it around for some time, keeping it a secret, or he just got lucky.  I think the latter.  I'd almost have to say it's a fresh catch.  While extremely powerful, it isn't using its abilities to their fullest potential.  If so, we'd have had a hell of a lot more trouble from it.  That would indicate that it’s either new, or it’s playing political games with Lenamare."

"How often does one end up finding a newcomer that's fourth order?  Not that often.  If it's not using its abilities, I'd assume its master-demon politics and Lenamare just really doesn't have a clue to what it should be able to do."  Ramses stated.

"Or doesn't want to push things, by allowing it too much freedom.  Lenamare is not stupid, I remind you," added Bess.  "He may know exactly what it can do, and just doesn't want to chance giving it a free hand."

"Either way, I am sure the demon is incidental.  Lenamare hasn't opened the book yet."  Exador insisted emphatically.

"So what's the next step?"  Ramses asked.

"Well, one of our bungling search parties located a fleeing caravan.  They intercepted it and got trashed by the fourth order.  This was probably Jehenna's caravan.  Lenamare may have been in it also, but he is already in Freehold, the caravan couldn't have made it there yet.

"I've sent out demons to intercept the remains of the caravan and hopefully they can tell us where the book is or more precisely what Lenamare is up to.  I am relatively sure, however, that Lenamare has the book with him in Freehold.  He'd be a fool to let it out of his sight."  Exador explained.

"So we can confirm what we're already pretty sure of.  How do we recover the book?"  Bess asked.

"We've got to get someone into Freehold to steal the book for us.  If we get anyone from the caravan, I may be able to influence them, or trick them into stealing the book from Lenamare, once they're  reunited with him."

"Any possibility of a more overt move?"  asked Ramses.

"I don't like relying on one of Lenamare's people being subverted.  What about one of our people going in directly?"  Bess proposed.

"
The council members are blind fools, wrapped up in their own petty concerns.  If something went wrong with this, and we were exposed in doing something; it would complicate things enough to get them questioning the whole situation.  We don't want them to know about the book," Exador stated.

"What about one of our people or us, shape changed to look like one of Lenamare's people?"  Ramses asked, pacing back and forth at his end of the table.

"Possible, but we'd need to know who to impersonate.  It would have to be someone relatively high up in the school, and someone we'd have in our custody, dead or at least out of the way."

"Jehenna?"  asked Bess, licking her lips.

"If she is with the caravan then maybe we can. However, as if impersonating her wouldn't be hard enough, if she’s not in the caravan then getting her out of the way in Freehold would certainly be difficult and noisy."  Exador stated, exasperated.  Bess had a couple three bones to pick with Jehenna.

"We must come up with something
, however."  Ramses insisted, trying to get the others to start coming together on a plan.

"We will," stated Exador, "our lives depend upon it."

"Let go of me you stupid, lichen eating, moss bearing, demonic scumbags from hell!"  Jenn shouted as she squirmed trying to make the demons let go of her.  By any measure that she could think of, she should be scared out of her mind.  Her anger seemed to be keeping fear at bay.  For the moment at least; or maybe the close proximity of that stupid fourth order demon for a prolonged period had numbed her sense of self-preservation.  Jenn didn't know, but she did know she was upset.

The demons had grabbed her and pulled her through some sort of gateway before Tom could get to her.  At first she'd been scared they'd take her to the Abyss and do vile unspeakable acts of violence upon her person.  After the nerve
-shattering transition however, she'd found herself and the demons in the middle of an army camp.   An army camp that had lots of wounded.  From the insignias on the soldiers' uniforms she was pretty sure it was Exador's army, but it was a lot smaller than before and she didn't see Lenamare's castle over the tents surrounding her and the demons.  Surely Lenamare couldn't have destroyed the entire castle as well as this many men.  Exactly how powerful was that spell of his?

One of the demons
held her tightly as the other explained to a guy in a uniform with lots of medals exactly what had happened.  The officer, or so Jenn assumed he was, looked her over a couple times as the demon accurately described her kidnapping.  Finally the demon finished and the officer stood lost in thought for a moment.  At last he looked up to where the hovering demon was holding her and addressed Jenn directly.  "So, you were wandering the countryside in the company of a greater demon?  Amusing.  You don't look old enough or powerful enough to control such a being, but maybe you had some control device?

"In either case, I am sure Lord Exador will wish to speak with you upon his return."

Aha
, her guess was confirmed.  She was in Exador's camp.  Where, though, was the rest of his army?  What exactly was that device of his that got so many soldiers wounded?  Finally, where was Exador if he wasn't here now?

"Remove her robe, and make sure she has no spell components or magical items in her clothes underneath the robe.  Then bind her hands and feet and put her in the prisoner tent."  The officer instructed the demons.

Working together, the two demons quickly had Jenn trussed as directed.  Despite her best efforts to struggle, they were just too strong.  When they took her robe, Jenn became concerned.  The mysterious book was in it, and she really didn't want them getting a hold of it.  While she didn't know what it was, she was pretty sure Lenamare would be upset if it fell into Exador's hands.  The loss of her spell components was also annoying, but expected.  She could make do without them, assuming she ever got her hands free.  Fortunately the weather was warm enough that her blouse and riding breeches would be warm enough without the robe.

The two demons hauled her over to a large center
pole tent that had two human guards at the entrance.  At the demons' approach, one guard raised the tent flap and stepped aside so the demon holding her could toss her in.

She fell hard on her face.  The demons had tied her hands behind her back and her ankles were also tied together.   As she rolled to her side, the light in the tent darkened as the tent flap closed behind her.  The tent was basically empty except for a rather worn rug on the floor, and one other human inhabitant.  The other prisoner was tied similar to herself and was leaning against the
center pole of the tent.  He was dressed in clothes that resembled a hodgepodge of Lenamare’s soldier’s uniforms and silk clothes.  He was young, maybe slightly older than Jenn and his golden hair was disheveled, his face was red with white spotches.  It appeared that he'd been crying a bit recently. 

While he looked familiar, it took Jenn a little while to recognize him.  It was one of the wizard's who'd ambushed her party.  The one the demon had let run off.  "You!"  She accused.

~

Gastropé
looked up at her.  Until she'd shouted at him, Gastropé had only been vaguely aware that she was there.  He'd paid just enough attention to be sure they weren't coming to get him when the tent flap had opened, and then sunk back into his misery.  When he looked up at the shout, he recognized the caravan wizard who'd entangled him in weeds.  He was momentarily startled.  "What," Gastropé said flatly.

"You're one of the murdering scum that attacked my caravan.  You're one of Exador's men!  What are you doing in here?"

"I failed, your caravan won, thanks to that...that...demon thing of yours.  Exador's annoyed, now he's going to punish me.  Kill me; turn me into a toadstool; torture me; I don't know.  It is all your fault though."  Gastropé said, getting slightly angry towards the end.

Jenn was taken aback.  "My fault!  You attacked me? 
And it’s my fault you got your butt kicked?"

"Well, if you'd just surrendered, we would have taken you back here, and you'd be in the same place you are now, but I'd be in good standing.  So , yes,
it’s your fault."  Gastropé said, seeming to perk up a little as he thought about it.  They did capture her, thanks to his information; maybe Exador would be lenient.

"You have plenty of nerve.  You and your buddies killed people I knew and cared for, and you have the nerve to blame me?"  Jenn was mad again, mad enough to feel mean.  "You're absolutely crazy!  You talk tough now, but you weren't looking too mean last time I saw you.  If I get my hands free, I'll summon my demon and see if you don't feel like being more reasonable."  
Gastropé blanched when Jenn said this.  She immediately regretted having said it.  Goddess knew how much the demon frightened her, and this kid had even more reason to fear Tom than she did.  Not that she'd ever be stupid enough to summon the demon, but even so, the threat wasn't very nice.  She couldn't take it back though.  He had been asking for it, hadn't he?

They both sat in silence.  There wasn't much to say.  All they could really do was sit and wait for the return of Exador.  Jenn, of course, decided to use the time to figure out how to escape.  If only she could teleport.  Of course, she'd still need to get the book back first.  But if she could teleport, things would be a lot better.  At the moment things didn't look too good.