Come Armageddon Read online

  If the creatures of the Pit were here with Tiyo-Mah now, then this heart of evil would be their first place of refuge, as it had been her last before she was driven out.

  Ardesir stood in the heat of the shadowed, airless pavement and stared up at the towering mass of the palace, basalt polished till it shone. How long had it nestled here, cellars deep into the bowels of the earth? Two thousand years, three thousand? What sins had been committed in its chambers?

  He must watch Tiyo-Mah, learn her strategy and then create one of his own. He stood motionless on the hot stones, the heat choking him, his skin covered in sweat.

  Then at last he turned away. He should find lodgings until he could judge whom to trust and to burden with his mission, and some kind of work to explain his presence in the city. Names and faces filled his mind, but judgement must be perfect. There was no room for even the slightest mistake.

  In Erebus, that region of air and shadow that is neither the world nor hell, but something eternal between the two, Asmodeus paced back and forth. The fury was dark bile inside him as he thought how Tiyo-Mah had disobeyed his command. Not yet, he had told her. It was not time! A few more years and the warriors Tathea had forged would wither. Age would rack their bones and the waiting would dull their hearts, The end would be only death, and the knowledge that all their preparation was for nothing. Asmodeus had the one weapon she could not fight—time. Even Tathea would weaken in the end. It had begun to happen already. She was vulnerable. She loved Sadokhar; through his failure she had nearly been destroyed.

  And now he had taken everything into his own hands, broken all the laws and gone through the portal! How could anyone have foreseen that outrageous sacrifice? How could Tathea have allowed it? She knew what he was going to do—and she had let him do it!

  And Tiyo-Mah, arrogant, self-willed, cruel, ever-hungry Tiyo-Mah, had gone into the world, taking the Lords of the Undead with her. Only Yaltabaoth had seized back the key to prevent Sadokhar himself returning!

  But they were all of no importance. Asmodeus slashed the dark air with his left hand in a furious gesture, dismissing them from thought. They were only the souls of the damned. They were his already. He would deal with them in his own time. As it was, they were condemned for ever to be locked in one body with others of their overriding sin, never to be free of them, never to have privacy or rest, or even command of their own limbs. The never-ceasing voices and wills of others would be quarrelling within them, pulling, tearing, making every gesture a labour, and silence loud with dissension. They no longer possessed an individual existence or the power so much as to pick up an object or take a step without the agreement of others.

  How Tiyo-Mah would hate that! Not even the workings of her innermost body would be secret any more. There would be no rest, not ever, not while the stars burned in their courses or the galaxies wheeled in splendour through the night.

  That is what he would do to her, when this was over. Even if she were part of the victory, still she must be made to suffer for her disobedience.

  But not yet ... she might be useful. This rebellion, like all others, could be turned until it was an advantage.

  Asmodeus stared across the darkening chasms of his prison in the air, clouded, shadowed, encompassed by the void, his right hand clenched on the keys of the world, and considered the others who had awoken his wrath. They too must be punished. He had known them since the birth of time. Like himself, they had chosen the plan which was not God’s, nor their elder Brother’s, and they had never had forms of flesh. They were of the spirit, and only by act of will could appear to have body, but no resurrection awaited them.

  His lip curled as he pictured Azrub, the golden dwarf who had perfected the art of delusion. He could read men’s hearts and understand what it was they desired, good or evil, and he could create from those dreams the semblance of reality to the last touch and smell, until they believed they possessed it. What man can resist the desire of his soul and take the bitter reality instead?

  Yes, Azrub was a superb tool, Asmodeus knew that, even as he was revolted by him. It was not the dwarf’s yellow eyes or his pale, fluttering hands, or the weight of him that repelled, it was the licking of his lips, the appetite that raged inside him. His lust fed on the dreams of others, and his toying with them satisfied his hunger. Without it something in him starved. Asmodeus thought of that with relish. Azrub would suffer an unsatisfied lust which would consume him, eating away his inside. That is how he would be punished!

  And how, Asmodeus thought, would he use Cassiodorus, the Lord of Terror? There was nothing to be gained by merely allowing him to rampage through the world with violence. That would destroy physical things, maybe kill a few hundred or a few thousand. But it would not corrupt any souls, and Armageddon was not about death, it was about that part of man which never dies, the inner, immortal core. God could raise as many dead bodies to live for ever as there are stars in the heavens, but He cannot make one soul better than it chooses to be.

  No, Cassiodorus was a weapon to keep until the time was right, and terror could be used to purpose.

  That was true of all of them! It was even true of Asmodeus himself. He dare not walk the earth too soon and risk being seen by men. If he made the smallest gesture he showed his hand. His greatest weapon now was the very fact that people did not believe in him. “Devil! What devil? There is no devil!” Like-wise “There is no God!” Grant one, and you grant the other.

  Asmodeus must bide his time, wait until Tiyo-Mah had ripened the field for him and the harvest was ready.

  In the meantime, how would he punish Cassiodorus for his disobedience? Set him in a world where everything was already smashed to fragments, and there was no one left to terrify. Then he too would starve.

  And Ulciber, the beautiful, ever-youthful Ulciber, who desired above all to have a body of flesh which could be resurrected and live for ever. Ulciber, who understood the heart of human weakness so well because he was so nearly human himself! Ulciber was the first and easiest to use, as he always had been. He would begin with the suggestion, the word in the heart, the small voice that tells you what you want to hear. He had the art to make evil seem good, even necessary. He would reap many souls down and the harvest would be rich.

  But in the end, of course, he must be punished as well. Asmodeus stared over the moving darkness into the void, and savoured the thought in his mind. He would set him among those already so corrupt they could sink no lower. He would become idle and hungry, robbed of use. Then what would he have to feed on, what left to destroy?

  Lastly Asmodeus thought of Yaltabaoth, Lord of Despair, and his own limbs grew cold and his bones ached. Azrub could not deceive him, he knew all truth. Cassiodorus could not frighten him, he was master of chaos himself, and not even Ulciber could taste the knowledge of corruption he possessed.

  But in Asmodeus there was a fierce, white-hot belief that he would win, come Armageddon, and when he did, the earth would be his to have and hold for eternity! It would be his star from which to spread out in endless power and dominion. Millions of worlds would be his. His glory would never end.

  When he won!

  Yaltabaoth’s was the one power which might touch him. He had fought this battle from the daybreak of eternity. He had always believed he would win! But the wing of despair brushing the heart was a wound to which even he was not invulnerable.

  He would not use Yaltabaoth yet. Not for a long time. The world was far from despair. Of course, there had always been individuals, and there would be now. But not Tathea, not her warriors forged in the peace of the Island, and the rich knowledge she still kept from the days when she could open the Book!

  Yaltabaoth could truly work only when Asmodeus had already sown the seeds and the harvest was ripe. He would reap in the last remaining souls, the ones nothing else could touch.

  But how to punish him for his arrogant disobedience in returning to the world now, before he was commanded? That was something Asmodeus did not yet
know. But he would find a way. Yaltabaoth would have his weakness. Everyone did!

  The wind raced hollow and dark across the emptiness, and he paced the ramparts, his mind filled with visions of the day he would have them all in his hand. Perhaps it was only a disobedience that they had begun so soon, not a disaster. He should have no fear of Tathea, or anyone she could persuade to follow her. She was human, full of doubt and terror, like anyone else. After all, she was cut of the same cloth as himself, a sister from the first morning of creation. She too could be tempted by beauty, by praise, by the knowledge that she was loved, and needed! She also was afraid of failure, of loneliness, of pain. She believed, but she could be darkened by despair, the fear of loss, of being betrayed, that those she loved were not equal to the call—as, of course, they were not! None of them was. They would all turn to ease and cheap glory in the end. He knew that!

  But more than doubt in others, she could be made to doubt herself! She could be weakened to nothing by the fear that she was not good enough, not strong enough, and above all, not loved enough! That was the final cut to the soul—the knowledge she would have to face in the end—no one would love her enough to light the stars across the darkness of the last defeat.

  This was his world! He would keep it! He had the keys, and he would use them. His hand clenched and he held them up, smiling. He would not lose—not this time! And it was this time that decided eternity.

  Ardesir moved cautiously, but one friend from the past of whom he was certain was a writer and fellow architect named Min-Obal. He proved easy to find, since he now worked in the Isarch’s palace, and one or two discreet enquiries, made as if from idle politeness, ascertained where he now lived.

  Within five days of his arrival in Thoth-Moara, Ardesir was lodging with his old friend, sitting one evening in the quiet inner courtyard of Min-Obal’s house watching the water shimmer over the walls of the upper pool and slide almost without sound into the outer pool where the lilies lent their perfume to the fading sunlight.

  At first they both spoke only of the pleasure of seeing each other after such a long absence, recounting all that had befallen them between then and now, laughing at quicksilver Shinabari jokes. But the shadows in Min-Obal’s dark, curious face made it easy to move to the wider things that hovered on the edge of the consciousness all the time.

  “It’s worse, even in the last few days,” Min-Obal said with an edge of surprise in his voice. He shrugged very slightly. “I suppose the barbarians have been growing stronger for years and it’s been so gradual we’ve hardly noticed it. Border raids have been one of life’s hardships for generations. But just this morning I heard that an old woman, a widow from the southern desert, arrived in the city a day or two ago, and she says that it is far more serious than even the worst reports have said.”

  Ardesir heard the edge of fear in his friend’s voice, carefully disguised. He was a good man and not easily disturbed. He knew the rumours of politics well.

  “An old woman?” Ardesir said with a tiny shiver even in the still beat of the evening. “What kind of an old woman? What does she look like?”

  Min-Obal was startled. “Look like?”

  “Yes. Have you seen her? Do you know anyone who has?”

  “I’ve heard she is small and gaunt, and her hair is thin enough to see her scalp through it. What has that to do with the news of the barbarians?”

  “I don’t know,” Ardesir confessed. He was uncertain how much truth to tell even Min-Obal. And yet if he trusted no one, he might still learn information, but far more slowly and perhaps too late to be of use. But more than that, without allies, what measures could he take to fight against her?

  Min-Obal was watching him, knowing he was weighing how much to trust him.

  Ardesir chose courage above the careful voice of sense within himself. He could not tell anyone the truth—he had no facts, no proof to make it believable—but he must come as close to it as he could.

  “She is a woman of immense evil,” he replied, looking at Min-Obal intently. “She will use any means she can to gain power. I followed her here from the Island. I know more of her than I can tell you yet.”

  There was neither doubt nor belief in Min-Obal’s face. “She says the barbarians are far more numerous than we supposed, and are massing for a serious attack, to drive inwards even as far as Thoth-Moara one day,” he said levelly. “There are indications that that is true.”

  “Perhaps,” Ardesir conceded. Deliberately he lightened his tone. “But I need to find work. I have a certain amount of money, but it will not last for ever, and my days of being a hungry student of the arts are a memory I don’t wish to resurrect!”

  Min-Obal smiled, making himself relax also. “There is not a great deal of building at the moment, especially of the quality you would be interested in, but I shall enquire. They are talking of a courthouse towards the northern sector of the city.” Then his look darkened. “The city has changed even in the short time you’ve been gone. There’s more corruption, and it’s deeper, even in places you don’t expect to find it. There is not much which can’t be bought, if you have the price and know where to offer it. And you can lose things—jobs, commissions, even horses—without ever knowing why, although you can guess. But it’s wiser not to.”

  Ardesir was saddened, but he knew he should not be surprised. Eudoxius had said as much of Camassia, why not of Shinabar also?

  “I would rather be in the centre of the city,” he said, not referring to the corruption but meeting Min-Obal’s eyes ruefully. He could not afford to be far from Tiyo-Mah. He plunged on. “Is there nothing in the palace?”

  Min-Obal looked surprised only for an instant. “Not at your level of skill,” he answered. “Clerk of restoration works. That is half the money you could earn.” He smiled. “And a quarter what you are worth.”

  “Can you get it for me, even if I have to pay?”

  Min-Obal was puzzled, but he did not argue. “I think so. Are you certain?”

  “Yes ... yes, absolutely. Please?”

  Ardesir began work in the palace the day he was given the news by Min-Obal. It mattered not in the slightest whether he earned little or much, but he had to be careful not to raise suspicion by being seen to be too eager to accept such a comparatively lowly office. There were those who remembered not only his skills but his ambition, and would find indifference to advancement impossible to believe. Therefore he allowed remarks as to his one day designing a new palace to go by with a smile and no demur.

  Every other day more news came in of barbarian raids on the desert oases of the south, and each time the atrocities recounted were more hideous. People were killed needlessly and their bodies left in the sand. Women were mutilated. The tales of horror grew and spread a fire of terror in the city.

  Within weeks panic was in the air and it was then that Ardesir saw Tiyo-Mah for the first time. The Isarch, a man in mid-life, already running to sallowness and slack flesh around the paunch, was asking particularly for someone to advise him how to deal the barbarians a blow that would crush them and send them back into the wilderness. His generals had grown complacent, unused to war in generations; the army was a parade-ground force who had never faced the privations of a desert campaign, let alone actual bloodshed, and he had lost patience and temper with their excuses. The courtiers were pedlars of favour, influence and money, and they hated each other more than they perceived any danger beyond the confines of the city which had nourished and divided them for centuries. They answered with flattery and blame, and evaded the issue.

  That was when Tiyo-Mah came forward. Ardesir saw her. She was as Min-Obal had said, a small woman, narrow-shouldered and bent with age, her hair scraped back over the dome of her head. She wore a dark green tabard, almost black, embroidered with turquoise and gold, the ancient royal colours of Shinabar and before the modern taste for purples, aping the Camassian Empire.

  She came quietly, a widow from the south, bringing news of yet more devastation
, and yet reaffirming her belief in victory in a time of common bereavement. She did not kneel before the Isarch, but her age excused her that, and he seemed blind to the power in her black eyes and her cruel, beaked face. To him she was no more than marred with age and loss, and he received her with courtesy, because he wished to hear the news himself, even if he dreaded it.

  Ardesir stood in the place he had been granted for such audiences, beside other minor palace officials who swelled the ranks of courtiers without taking more important men from duties that mattered.

  “We grieve for your loss,” the Isarch said in answer to her account of a village massacre in which she had supposedly seen five members of her family put to the sword.

  She kept her eyes down, but her body shuddered. “We must defeat them, Majesty, before they destroy all our southern cities, and move on to Thoth-Moara itself,” she said urgently. “But of course you are doing that! No doubt you are preparing even now to levy greater taxes so that your armies can be increased, and better weapons forged for them.” The faintest smile touched the corners of her soft, perished lips. “And you will already be seeking new generals who are more experienced in war ... not easy in a land which has enjoyed centuries of peace. Perhaps an old woman who knows the barbarian can offer her loyalty in the form of advice to her lord?” She did not wait for his answer. “There are men of my tribe who are scarred and hardened by experience of such wars. They know the ways of the desert, and they hunger for the place and the means to serve their country and find their revenge at one time.”

  There was a slight murmur around the chamber as fear rustled through like a wind, then, as the Isarch raised his hand, hushed to silence.

  Very slowly Tiyo-Mah lifted her head.

  The Isarch paled. His hands gripped the ends of the armrests in his golden seat.