The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (60 page)

~

“You know, I find Trisfelt’s lady friend, Hilda, quite charming. She seems extremely perceptive and bright for a layman,” Lenamare observed apropos of nothing while applying butter to his toasted muffin.

Across the small breakfast table, Jehenna arched an eyebrow and glanced up from the letter she was reading. “You would think that,” she snorted.

Lenamare paused in mid-motion, tilting his head to ask, puzzled, “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Oh, come on.” Jehenna shook her head. “You must have noticed.” She reached for her cup of tea.

“Noticed what?” Lenamare asked, clearly confused and not understanding what she meant.

“Yesterday?” Jehenna gently shook her head from side to side. “She was buttering you up better than you’re doing to that muffin!”

Lenamare looked taken aback. “Seriously? You must be joking!”

Jehenna sighed. Putting the letter down on her lap, she stared directly at Lenamare. “You cannot tell me that you, Lenamare the Great, do not know when someone is flattering you?”

Lenamare’s mouth opened in a stunned O. He finally shook his head. “What possible reason could that woman have for flattering me? What end would that serve?”

Jehenna sighed heavily. “Men! You are all so dense. I don’t know why we women put up with you.” Lenamare was completely baffled at this point. Jehenna just stared at him. Finally she said, “She obviously has a crush on you!” She raised her hands in hopelessness. “She’s like any senior student infatuated with a famous professor!”

“No…” Lenamare denied. “That cannot be.” Now he was shaking his head. He paused and looked thoughtful.

“Men are always the last to realize when a woman is flirting with them,” Jehenna noted archly.

“But I thought she and Trisfelt were courting?” Lenamare said.

Jehenna gave her head a small shake. “Clearly, she’s simply using him to get access to you.”

Lenamare grimaced. “Ah, poor Trisfelt. Here I had been hoping he might have finally found himself a companion.”

“It is a shame, particularly since the woman is clearly working a lost cause,” Jehenna stated firmly.

“What do you mean, ‘lost cause’?” Lenamare asked, looking slightly insulted.

Jehenna closed her eyes briefly, and then reopened them. “It is a lost cause because you are with me, and that is not going to be changing. Is it?” Jehenna asked sternly. There could clearly be only one correct answer.

“Oh. Of course not.” Lenamare replied, startled and slightly embarrassed at having missed her meaning.

~

“I just want to stop by my suite to check on everyone before we launch the next hunting party,” Tom said. “I assume, since we are calling on Ragala-nargoloth, that you will be commanding the hunting party, Arg-nargoloth?”

“It would be my honor, Great One,” Arg-nargoloth said, clearly trying not to sound too pleased.

“I too would check on Fer-Rog, who I believe is with Rupert,” Zelda said.

“We shall meet the rest of you back here in the assembly area before long.” Tom nodded to the commanders. He and Zelda headed off towards Tom’s suite.

As they made their way through the corridors Tom asked Zelda, “Do you wish you were going?”

Zelda snorted slightly. “It would be a great experience. However, as steward, my duty is here in the mountain.”

Tom nodded. “But at some point, perhaps it would be good for you to go on a hunting party. After all, as the Steward of the Mount, you must intimately understand all details of the Mount and its provisioning.” He glanced at her.

Zelda nodded, “You are quite wise, My Lord, and when appropriate, I shall be honored to add to my skillset in order to serve the Mount.” Tom was not sure, but he thought he detected a bit of extra brightness in her eyes and the subtlest whisper of a miniscule grin of pleasure on her face.

“Excellent!” Tom smiled.

They entered his suite to find Reggie, Antefalken, Boggy, Tizzy and Talarius all there. Estrebrius was presumably still with Vaselle; Rupert and Fer-Rog were off someplace.

“You two are back!” Tom smiled at Reggie and Antefalken. He looked over to Talarius, who seemed a bit different. It took Tom a minute to register the difference in the knight’s posture. “Got a good night’s sleep, I take it?” Tom smiled at the knight, who immediately seemed to get agitated.

“I did rest for a bit,” Talarius admitted.

Tom grinned. “I see no one roasted you in the night.”

“No. They did not.” Talarius said tersely.

“Talarius, for the last time, I will not roast you or kill you down here. At some point, I will see to your safe return to Astlan. You have my word on it. Provided, of course, that you don’t try to or succeed in killing any of the others under my protection while you are here.”

Talarius made a harrumphing noise.

Zelda shook her head. “Knight, why do you doubt the word of Lord Tommus? Surely you know that in his previous existence, Lord Orcus was known as the God of Oaths and the Punisher of Perjurers. There was no greater crime that one could commit before Lord Orcus than to break one’s oath or to be foresworn.”

Hmm, do not remember that from the
Monster Manual, Tom thought to himself. Not a bad thing; he really did get sort of bent out of shape when people broke their word. He shook his head. He needed to keep his own head pulled back into reality, or whatever passed for reality around here. He was not Orcus reincarnated.

“Speaking of oaths,” Antefalken said, breaking into the conversation, “as you might imagine, I managed to freak Damien out a little with our adventures. It might not be a bad idea for you to pay him a visit and reassure him that nothing has changed.”

Antefalken chuckled. “I think Vaselle and I, between the two of us, may have been a bit much.”

“So the two of you double teamed him? Great!” Tom shook his head.

“Yeah, and by the way…” Antefalken paused; Tom nodded. “…one thing I suggested to reassure him was that perhaps he could come for a visit. Gastropé and Jenn have both been to the Abyss and lived. Talarius is here now, and seeing the knight safe might reassure him.”

Tom shrugged. “I have no real problem with that. He would need to know how to do the Cool spell that Gastropé and Jenn use. I am sure they could teach him.” Tom paused. “Or Jenn could—Gastropé is flying around killing liches.”

Antefalken grimaced. “Jenn is with Gastropé.”

Tom looked at the bard, puzzled. “Really? That seems odd. I didn’t think she cared that much for him.”

Antefalken shrugged. “The short answer is that the Council needed everyone who was being hunted by the Rod or Oorstemoth to be gone from the city, so they sent them on a quest. I am guessing that’s how they ended up flying around in the clouds fighting liches on dragonback.”

“A quest? A quest to rid the world of liches?” Tom asked.

“Well, the Council and many others have now seen a crystal ball recording of your battle, and apparently the Council noticed the flying carpet that we spotted before the battle. And they pretty much reached the same conclusion we did.”

Tom nodded, remembering the flying carpet with Bess, Exador and Ramses on it. Tom, Antefalken and Tizzy had assumed they were the three archdemons.

“By the way, I was thinking about Exador being an archdemon. It just seems bizarre. He’s a wizard known for enslaving demons,” Tom said.

“Slave, minimum wage employee—hard to tell the difference.” Tizzy shrugged.

“So you are saying he wasn’t conjuring and enslaving demons, but paying them money?” Tom asked incredulously.

Tizzy and Boggy both shrugged. “Yeah, most of the soldier demons are employed by higher-level demons,” Boggy said. “Not a life I would want, but to each his own. It pays for the Denubian Choco-Coffee
TM
.”

Tom twisted his mouth and tilted his head with a small shrug. “I guess that makes sense; seems a lot easier than pure compulsion.” He shook his head. “But back to what you were saying: how is this related to a quest?” he asked Antefalken.

“Well, it seems that Trevin D’Vils…” Antefalken began.

“Pagan whore!” Talarius interrupted. Tom rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying not to poke his eyes out with his claws. As much as he wanted to ask about this Trevin D’Vils and why she was a pagan whore, he needed to keep this conversation on track.

“Continue,” Tom told Antefalken, raising his hand to hold Talarius off.

“Anyway, Trevin recognized her as possibly being Bastet or Bestat, Defender of House and Home,” Antefalken continued.

“That’s a rather odd title for an archdemon,” Boggy noted.

Antefalken shook his head. “No, Trevin says that Bastet was a goddess of the Nyjyr Ennead, a pantheon of deities previously worshiped in Natoor and Najaar.”

“Heretics, false deities, thankfully long gone!” Talarius stated proudly.

“Wiped out by the Etonians,” Antefalken said, nodding to Talarius.

“Heretics?” Reggie asked. “You mean like my accursed mistress?”

Antefalken turned to stare at Reggie, as did Talarius. Tom looked back and forth between the three, not having any idea of what they are talking about.

“Same heretics. Memphis was one of their holiest cities. Fortunately, your heretic mistress worships gods that are long dead,” Talarius said, nodding emphatically.

“Or maybe not.” Antefalken countered.

The knight swiveled to look at the bard. Again, it was really hard to read the knight’s expressions inside his giant helmet. Tom thought about lowering the temperature of the entire mountain, except it might interfere with mana generation. There was too much he still did not understand about this fortress.

“The Council, and in particular Trevin, think that the third archdemon might not have been an archdemon at all, but the goddess Bastet. They are on a quest to discover the truth,” Antefalken said.

Tom shook his head. “I’m rather new to Astlan, but isn’t goddess hunting a bit dangerous?”

“Sounds like it to me,” Boggy said.

Antefalken raised his hands. “Don’t ask me, I’m just relaying what I was told. I am not sure they seriously expect to find a goddess.”

“But why would a goddess be slumming as an archdemon?” Reggie asked.

Tizzy released a large cloud of smoke. “I’ve been asking myself that same question ever since she and her avatars popped up in the Abyss about a hundred and fifty years ago. Built themselves a scary fortress and all started pretending to be demons.” Tizzy shook his head. “Always seemed a bit déclassé to me.”

“Well, I should think the real estate down here would be cheaper,” Boggy noted.

“Tizzy, are you saying that this Bess, the archdemon ally of Exador and Ramses, really
is
a goddess?” Tom asked.

Tizzy shrugged. “Well, that has been my assumption. I smelled them when they first showed up here, all at the same time, which is very odd.” He took a quick puff on his pipe. “The odder thing, though, was the smell; they didn’t smell so much like buttah as marzipan.” He pronounced
buttah
in his yenta voice but otherwise spoke normally.

“Marzipan?” Talarius asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, it’s an almond paste, smells a lot like cherries,” Tizzy told the knight.

“I know what it is; I’m asking why they smelled like marzipan,” Talarius said, annoyed.

Tizzy shrugged. “Why do others smell like buttah?” Again, the demon used his yenta voice for
buttah
.

“You are the only person I know who can smell new arrivals,” Boggy said. “I don’t smell anything.”

“What did Talarius smell like?” Reggie asked.

“Like blood, sweat and piss,” Tizzy said. Talarius glared at him.

Tizzy grinned. “I should know, I carried him all the way back to the cave, got quite a whiff.” He shuddered slightly. “But the smell only comes when someone manifests a new body. Talarius came through a hole, a portal; he didn’t incarnate a new body as is what happens with new arrivals.”

“So the goddess and her avatars created new demon bodies for themselves?” Antefalken asked.

Tizzy shrugged again. “So it would seem, but like I said, it didn’t smell right and they all showed up at the same time. Fortress popped up very shortly thereafter, too soon to have been built normally. That smelled weird too, like iron and sulfur. I got there with some cookies just after the fortress was completed. They’d just shut the door behind them, so I had to knock.”

“Hey, you didn’t bring me cookies!” Boggy said, annoyed. “A hundred and fifty years ago? You also didn’t bring me along to check out the fortress.”

“You were probably working.” Tizzy gave Boggy a glare. “Remember, you hadn’t eaten your accursed master then.”

“Well, technically, that would have been the grandfather of the accursed master that I ate,” Boggy pointed out.

“You ate your master?” Talarius said incredulously.

“Best way to get rid of him once and for all,” Boggy said.

“Seems pretty gross,” Reggie said. “But then, where I come from there’s this religion where every time they have a worship service, they eat bread and wine and pretend they are eating the body of their god. The oldest version of this religion actually believes the bread they eat and the wine they drink transubstantiate to become the actual physical flesh and blood of their god.”