The Fall of the House of Cabal (25 page)

‘Through choice?'

‘Yes.'

‘I can understand and respect that, but the fealty of a Princess of Hell weighs far less heavily than that of a common lemure. You would be a free agent for most of your time. The occasional conclave to decide this or that, but otherwise footloose and fancy-free to do as thou wilt. Common purpose, you see? Your natural inclinations lie in the same direction as my needs for a new and senior demon.'

Zarenyia rose from the pillows and walked up and down before the throne, hands behind her back, ruminating on Satan's words. ‘You're tempting me,' she said at last.

Ratuth Slabuth shrugged, the angles of his form rattling at the gesture. ‘Again, rather part of my job. Just think of it, my dear: no hiding in the outer darkness any longer; all the souls you can eat, just providing rather more actually reach Hell; and you shall never have to be summoned to manifest again, as the ability to do so at will is a gift of the position. Oh, and of course a palace constructed to your design and furnished to your every whim. Really, what else can I offer you? Doesn't every girl want to be a princess?'

Zarenyia did not answer, but only continued to pace back and forth. Not so long before, she might have told this new Satan, thank you, but no. She liked the outer darkness. She liked being her own creature. She liked being a devil.

Now she realised things had changed, and it was Johannes Cabal that changed them. He had needed somebody with her very specific skills and asked her along for an adventure. A real, actual adventure, and it had changed her. When it was all over and they had said their goodbyes, she had found the shadows and darkness of Hell's borderlands no longer inviting, but only dull. She had hung in her web and reminisced, reliving events over and over. The cobwebs blew gently in the sulphur-heavy air there around her, and she watched them with something new gnawing at her: ennui. There in the endless twilight she waited and waited for the slight spiritual tug that told her that she was being summoned back to the mortal world. She waited and waited, and she waited in vain. If not Cabal, then somebody. Just
somebody
. She wouldn't even devour them, not necessarily. Perhaps they could go on an adventure, she and this faceless, putative mortal, who always seems to wear a black suit and speak with a German accent. She had been delirious with joy when the summons finally came, although she had taken pains to conceal the extent of her pleasure on arrival. Really, darling—a girl has to maintain some mystique.

‘May I ask how long this offer is open?' she said.

‘How long?' He seemed surprised. ‘You're still not convinced?'

‘It's a splendid one, and don't think for a moment that I am not terribly tempted. Merely that I'm a tiny bit busy at present. On an adventure and everything, you see.' She didn't feel it necessary to add that Ratuth himself was nothing but a facsimile of the real thing, as were all the demons, as was this ‘Hell', and that any offer made here was therefore moot, to put it mildly. It seemed rude to bring something like that up.

‘Ah, yes. Cabal's little fool's errand.'

‘Oh, you know about that, do you?' Zarenyia thought it very metaphysical of a fictitious rendering of a real entity to be aware of the circumstances that had brought it about, and therefore unattractive.

I do hope he isn't going to break the fourth wall,
she thought, or at least, generated inhuman cerebral processes that equate to a human mind thinking words much like that.
If the dreadful oik starts whinging on about how ghastly it is to be fictional, I may very well scream.

‘The Fountain of Youth? Yes, of course. You wouldn't be aware of it of course, but every time some mortal or another invokes the Five Ways, it impinges on Hell, often at a very inconvenient time. Happily on this occasion, it brought you to me. Who says nice things don't happen to embodiments of elemental evil?'

‘I'm sorry, sweetheart, I fear that we may be talking at cross purposes. I have no idea what this “Five Ways” of yours is. Johannes has got himself a little book. I forget the name—somebody's diary, I think—but I am sure it isn't called
Five Ways
.'

‘Oh, my dear lady, no. We are talking entirely of the same thing or, strictly speaking, things. The
Five Ways
is a whim of my predecessor. It exists in different times and places, and goes by different names and appearances, but it always promises much. Nor does it lie.'

Zarenyia wondered how she might delicately raise the business of Ratuth Slabuth being a temporary copy of the real thing, and was struggling to find a way. Then she remembered that she was a devil and therefore permitted to behave very badly when circumstances called for it. This was a dispensation she greatly valued; it had made her feel quite good about herself during mass murders and when leaving dinner parties early, the latter usually because she had murdered everyone there. It was good to be a devil.

‘The thing is, darling—and pardon my bluntness—but Johannes's little magic book seems to create false versions of aspects of the world and its abutting worlds, just long enough to make their point. I wouldn't raise the matter except you seem to be quite keen to do so yourself. The meat of it is that we are here
because
of the book, therefore, the inescapable conclusion is…' She shrugged, spreading her hands apologetically. That didn't seem quite enough considering she'd just implied that Satan was a storybook character to his face, so she raised her spiderish forelegs and make an apologetic gesture with those, too.

Ratuth Slabuth confounded all that by laughing. ‘Oh, now I begin to understand your wariness. You believe me to be just part of the fiction of the Five Ways. No. Hell is the birthplace of the Five Ways, and represents one of its trials.'

Zarenyia's eyes widened. ‘So, you're saying—'

‘Yes. But don't trust to my word. To be frank, you would be foolish to. Use your senses. Reach out and taste this world, this Hell.'

Zarenyia gave Ratuth Slabuth a wryly suspicious eye, but did as he suggested. Creatures of the under- and overworlds have certain senses denied to mere mortals for the simple reason that mere mortals would never need them and, should they ever develop them, madness would shortly overwhelm them as they became aware of the superficiality of mundane existence, the great depths that undermine it, and the great heights that overarch it. Zarenyia reached out and found threads of happenstance and need, the weave of interactivities, the fabric of reality. She could smell that it ran threadbare out in the desert behind her towards the end of the endless cemetery, but here it flowed as it did anywhere, uneven as a web woven by a drunken spider.

‘Ah,' said Zarenyia. ‘Unless my senses deceive me, this really is Hell.'

‘Just so,' said Ratuth Slabuth with monumental complacency.

‘Lucifer has truly abdicated his role as Satan?'

‘I believe I said as much, yes.'

‘And you're the new Satan with all Lucifer's powers devolved to you?'

‘I would term it “unto you” as a more elegant phrasing, but yes.'

Zarenyia was feeling uncharacteristically overwhelmed. ‘The offer is real.'

‘A Princess of Hell. Indeed. I am entirely in earnest.'

Zarenyia, needing time to absorb that the offer—breathtaking enough even when she hadn't believed this reality—was genuine, changed the subject, albeit to one in which she was keenly interested. ‘This Five Ways, what exactly is it?'

‘Just one of Lucifer's whims, and let me tell you, there'll be far fewer of those sorts of shenanigans henceforth. Focus on core business, that's the ticket.'

‘If Lucifer devised it, then why does it follow through on its promises?'

‘Because no one really wants what they think they do. Briefly, the Five Ways manifests in different ways depending upon the culture it broaches. It always offers the moon, however; sometimes literally. It will draw in five individuals, and they will be challenged in five ways, hence the nervously brilliant name of the thing. At the end of it, assuming they haven't died or been driven mad or just become distracted along the way, they will receive their hearts' desire. These boons will, naturally, destroy them, as is the way with achieved ultimate goals.' Ratuth Slabuth fluttered a tangent dismissively. ‘I'm convinced he was just at a loose end when he came up with it. Seems like make-work, doesn't it?'

Zarenyia was totting up names in her head: herself, Miss Barrow, Miss Smith, and the brothers Cabal. Five.

‘Oh, bother,' she said. ‘I like to think of myself as quite the wily one, but I appear to have gone galumphing into a trap like an utter
ingénue
. It's quite damaging to the old self-image, I must say.'

‘Hardly a trap, dear lady. You can walk out of it at any time, and now you know what it is, you have no reason not to.'

‘No. I suppose not.' She turned her attention to Satan. ‘In which case, to business. A princess, you say?'

‘Princess, palace, and power. All yours for the asking.'

‘Well, then. I suppose, allowing for the usual caveats about how if the deal isn't what it appears to be, I reserve the right to get violently cross about it, I accept. I just need to get Johannes and Miss Smith along the way, and then you shall have my full attention.'

‘Ah, yes.' Satan settled himself more comfortably upon his throne. ‘In Miss Smith I have no interest. She may return to her precious necropolis in the Dreamlands with my blessings, for whatever they are worth. Very little, I would guess.' He coughed slightly, an affected noise that rattled his vertices. ‘Johannes Cabal is, however, a different matter. He will have to be dealt with.'

Zarenyia showed no emotion, but she felt it. ‘You gave the impression that all was forgiven and forgotten, viz. Johannes.'

‘Yes, I did. Those were lies. Fathering them is expected of me these days. Be assured, Mistress Zarenyia, I am in no wise done with that necromancer. He was the author of my humiliation, he conspired against me and brought me low simply for doing my job.'

‘Which was…?'

‘Trying to engineer his destruction. He is a very awkward and recalcitrant man, you know? But I was never anything but professional in my dealings with him.' Ratuth Slabuth …
Satan
rose from his throne, and the awful geometry of his form unfolded until he towered, massive and emanating malevolence. ‘But he humiliated me, made me look a fool in front of Lucifer, and that was all that was required.'

Zarenyia weighed this, and thought it sounded like grapes of the sourest vine. ‘You mentioned something about sulphur pits, earlier…'

‘Molten sulphur, yes. But, no. Entirely insufficient. I have much better torments lined up for him.'

Zarenyia sighed. ‘Darling, I think I've been involved in enough innuendo-laden conversations to know where this is going, but I shall have to disappoint you. I cannot destroy him for you.'

‘Eh?' said Satan.

‘I have given my bond not to harm him nor any of his merry crew.' She neglected to explain that this did not technically extend to the late addition of Miss Smith, but she liked the necromantrix and did not care to give Ratuth Slabuth any options there. Nor did she feel the need to clarify that the giving of her bond had involved saying ‘dib' a lot.

To her concealed dismay, he seemed to take this philosophically. ‘Of course. I anticipated something of the sort. Why else would he travel with a whimsically inclined killer? So, he trusts you?'

‘Yes. I think so.' Another lie of omission; she was fairly sure she trusted him, too; an unusual sensation for a devil.

‘Excellent!' He rubbed together a couple of extruded extremities that he used for handling things. ‘Then that is all that is necessary. You will not harm him—a bond is unbreakable, after all—but you shall be vital to his downfall. The passion of Johannes Cabal shall begin with his betrayal…' He regarded Zarenyia through empty sockets darker than the most corrupt thought, and the bone of the skull creaked as he smirked. ‘Princess Zarenyia of the Ninth Circle.'

*   *   *

It was enough to turn a girl's head. Power, privilege, and as many murders as she cared to commit, which was quite a few. It might pall eventually—things usually do—but she would have a glorious few millennia reaching such a state.

And yet she found herself testing the Hell around her at first from a sense of disbelief and then as a reflex. It passed every sniff and touch she gave it, psychically and otherwise, but she knew it would. Rationally, she was as positive as she had ever been about anything that this was truly Hell, and that Ratuth Slabuth's promise to her was his bond. All she had to do was betray Johannes Cabal.

She knew she wouldn't be hurting him directly; her own promises to him precluded that. Not hurting him physically, at least. Thinking back, she had failed to extend her bond to cover allowing him to come to harm by the hands, claws, and writhing thorned tentacles of others or any other such bit of petty weaselry. It had never occurred to her to do so at the time. After all, she was a solitary creature, spending decades at a time in the web-shrouded caverns of the outer darkness. She knew no one to connive with, no fellow devil with whom to conspire.

Then along came Johannes Cabal, and there had been fun and murders galore. The best time she'd had in … well,
forever
. And then he'd gone again, and she was by herself once more in the long silence. Not even a postcard. Funny how he only got in touch when he wanted something. Typical man. Typical human.

It would be a small betrayal, really. She would simply lead him up the garden path as she had with so many of his species, and then leave him there to dry. Alone and undefended while Ratuth Slabuth did whatever it was he planned to do. She hadn't asked. She had no desire to know. There would be a brief unpleasantness for Cabal that would last no longer than eternity, and she meantime would be Princess Zarenyia. It was sad, but you can't make an omelette without damning a few souls to everlasting torment. It was a fact of life.