The Fall of the House of Cabal (22 page)

Cabal gave up; these demons were clearly next to useless as sources of information, or most things. Instead he expressed his exasperation to Zarenyia and Smith. ‘Ridiculous. How could Lucifer just leave things in such a state?' But his mind was already moving ahead and, if he was right about Lucifer, this had never been more than a sideshow to him in any case. He could have abandoned Hell just as easily as he abandoned any of his multitude of faces.

‘Who is Ratuth Slabuth?' asked Miss Smith. ‘You seem to know a lot about him. I've never heard of him before.'

‘Used to be one of Lucifer's generals,' supplied Zarenyia, pleased to gossip. ‘For reasons I could never understand. Good at the bureaucracy, I suppose, and there was a period when Lucifer was very bureaucratically inclined. Pettifogging little brute, dotting and crossing his way up the ranks. I recall talk of him even being raised to a princedom.'

‘What happened?'

‘Blessed if I know, and as I find being blessed uncomfortable you may be sure I don't. All of a sudden he was spectacularly out of favour and all his generalship and hopes of becoming an infernal prince up in smoke, which is a cleverer way of putting it than I realised when I started the sentence. As to why, it's a bit of a mystery.'

Cabal could have explained the primary reason for Ratuth Slabuth's fall from—and one uses the term advisedly—grace with great clarity, but it seemed a little like boasting, so he did not. Besides, if he was going to be making the new Satan's reacquaintance shortly, he was sure Ratuth would be unlikely to have forgotten him and there would probably be some gloating.

*   *   *

The structure of Hell seemed to have changed somewhat in Cabal's absence, but then he reminded himself—as he forced himself to do every few minutes—that this was not actually Hell exactly, the demons were not exactly demons, and the Ratuth Slabuth they would soon encounter was not exactly Ratuth Slabuth, former general of Hell, patronising snob, and proud tenant of the upper cantons of the enormous population spread across multiple realities, all of whom counted Johannes Cabal as an enemy.

In any case, his experiences of Hell's physical organisation to date did not tally at all with the scenery through which they now travelled. Previously it had all been tunnels and chambers, lava outfalls, stalactites, and stalagmites. The open red desert beneath the light of a burning, curdled moon that could be no true satellite was all new to him, nor did he recall this particular manifestation in any of his reading. The gibbous, flaming moon in particular gave him some grounds for concern, an echo of events that sounded loud and insistent and that boded no good if his fears were in any wise grounded. Unable to do very much about it, he contented himself with pointedly ignoring it on the off chance it was possible in this place to ‘cut' supernatural astronomical bodies, and thereby send them home in high dudgeon to sob their hearts out in a suitably vast boudoir.

The experiment didn't seem to be working thus far, but that was little enough reason to give it up just yet. Or ever.

The plain littered with the ruins of former diabolical grandeur gave way to a slow rocky incline that abruptly gave way to reveal that they were on the edge of a vast shallow crater as if torn out by a large though insubstantial asteroid, perhaps made of marshmallow, the wreckage of which was subsequently devoured by many ants over an extended period. It could just as easily have been an ancient volcanic caldera, but that offered fewer possibilities for marshmallow-orientated simile.

In the centre of the crater—whatever its origin—the land rose again as a spike of dark rock. The three of them paused in their progress to look at that wondrous structure. Striking thousands of feet up from the base of the crater stood the needle worked at every point into colonnades and balconies, arches and embrasures, and an embarrassment of columns, with finials and plinths of all manner of design where columns might reasonably go and pilasters where they couldn't.

‘That,' said Miss Smith, ‘is the stupidest wedding cake I have ever seen.'

In the red-hued shadows cast by the burning moon and its lazy glow that licked across the vault of what passed for Hell's sky, a city had gathered around the base of the needle, a humdrum ramshackle sort of place made from abrogated sins and cardboard boxes, corrugated iron and obsolescent dread.

‘Your new Satan's building efforts seem very polarised,' said Cabal. ‘Who lives in the needle? Where “live” is a very relative term.'

‘That's 'is Infernal Majesty's palace.'

‘
All
of it?'

The demon De'zeel nodded.

‘What has become of the princes?' demanded Zarenyia. ‘Where are Asmodeus and his crowd? They can't be living in those ruins we passed, can they?'

‘'Is 'Igh Sataness says pride is what put us down 'ere, so nobody gets nuffink wivout working for it. 'E gets the big 'ouse 'cos 'e worked 'ardest. Obvious, innit? He came up from the ranks, got busted down, came up again. So…' The lizard pointed at the needle, so impressive in some ways, so utterly ludicrous in others.

‘Why all the columns?' asked Miss Smith.

‘'E likes columns.'

*   *   *

'E did indeed. Cabal once more had the impression that this slippery realm that used the legend of Prester John as its shingle was trying to say something again, but he was not sure what it was. Perhaps it did not matter. It seemed to Cabal that, unappealing an idea that it was, he would perhaps be wisest not to treat these experiences as a puzzle box, or at least not quite yet. Surely, he thought, not all the pieces were yet in play, and what of Horst and Miss Barrow? Might they have made discoveries of their own? All the points of data—or at least a decent majority of them—were required before he might bring himself to profitably theorise. In the meantime …

‘Is that Leviathan?' said Zarenyia suddenly.

What had at first appeared to be a municipal hall covered with broken-down cardboard packing boxes joined with wire was now revealed to be a huge creature under a blanket of broken-down cardboard packing boxes joined with wire. The entity's vast cetaceous face looked mournfully down at them as they passed. By its front left flipper and hopelessly dwarfed by its bulk was a small sign, also written on rough brown cardboard.
Please Help
, it read.
Unable to Work Due to a Persistent Medical Condition
.

‘Don't
look
at 'im!' protested De'zeel when he noticed where their attention lay. ‘You'll only encourage 'im.'

‘'E's a mangledinker, in't 'e, De'zeel?' said De'eniroth, spending long seconds over each syllable and still getting them wrong.

‘A malingerer! Yus! That 'e is!'

Filled with righteous indignation, the demons marched (we must assume De'eniroth was marching, but really it was very hard to tell; certainly his many leg-like undulipodia assumed quite a martial rhythm in their movement) past the redundant Prince of Hell. Miss Smith looked back, and saw a tear sufficient to fill a pond run down Leviathan's cheek.

‘They're a cruel lot around here, aren't they?' she whispered to Cabal.

‘It
is
Hell. A reasonable facsimile of it, at least.'

She accepted the point, but added, ‘I wasn't expecting it to be quite so petty. Something more grandiose. But they seem to be content to practise the little sins of neglect that we see every day on the streets of any metropolis.'

Cabal looked at her askance. ‘You expected better?'

‘Yes. It's silly, but I was. Selfishness is the real root of all evil, but I thought we would see it grown here into extraordinary forms. Instead we have poverty and beggary while the powerful live up in the grand house and ignore it, as do their lickspittles. This is no more Hell than is London.'

‘Well…' began Cabal, but the thought was lost as they arrived at the needle's gatehouse.

*   *   *

The grand reception to the needle was situated within a huge blockhouse sufficient to contain the Royal Albert Hall, should it ever be stolen and require a place to hide it. Nor is ‘blockhouse' an entirely undeserved description. Yes, it had columns—many columns—and buttresses and crenellations and all manner of other architectural details that most architects spend a lifetime keeping out of the same building at the same time for fear of causing some sort of aesthetic overload. Yes, it was grand and impressive. Yes, it was all of these things and yet it still felt very, very military in nature. It was a barracks for hordes of demons who—the expedition noted as De'eniroth and De'zeel greeted and were greeted in return—were of the same mind as their guides; that is, very little mind for anything at all but an easy life. These were the ranks of the easily persuaded, those of weathercock loyalties and a finger or other useful appendage kept permanently moistened for the speedy discovery of which way the wind blew.

It was hardly surprising that Hell had an embarrassment of such treacherous riches; it was, after all, a land of opportunities for the disloyal and inconstant, and reliable unreliability is a sort of constancy in itself. What was perhaps a little more surprising was that they had thrown over any number of other opportunities to turn their coats in favour of hitching the flickering lanterns of their fidelity to a minor player such as Ratuth Slabuth. Yes, he had once been one of Lucifer's generals, but more by dint of his accountancy and organisational skills. As unlikely successions went, it was of an order with Attila the Hun being usurped by his tailor.

However he had managed to worm his way to the top of the pile, it was plain his was not a popular government. Lucifer had managed affairs using a sort of
laissez-faire
style that verged on not caring at all, enforced with occasional and terrible displays of merciless force against detractors and troublemakers. Lucifer had few rules and allowed Hell to more or less run itself, which, given how easily the minds of many of his subjects ran to chaos and turmoil, was possibly wise. If he had demonstrated any great genius for the position at all, it had been knowing the right demon for the right job, and in keeping the unaligned devils out of the main part of Hell so they might not sow resentment by the simple fact of their being.

It had been light-touch management carried to its extreme, but given that Hell's basic function was to be beastly to the souls of the damned and given that being beastly was very much a default position for the majority of demons, it had worked well enough. Even Lucifer's later adoption of cribbage and macramé to the horrors of the pit had worked surprisingly well. The truth of it was that an eternity of very much anything becomes torture after a while.

Ratuth Slabuth, in contrast, was the micro-manager from Hell in all senses. He had somehow engineered a coup (and probably done so using a lot of diagrams and a ream of graph paper) and rationalised the operations of Hell. It was probably far more efficient, but it was also hugely disruptive to creatures that enjoyed their own brands of huge disruption and didn't care for Ratuth's paginated, verified, and cross-checked version in the slightest. Hence the blockhouse.

Cabal had noted no other entrance visible in the cleared area around the needle's base and this did not surprise him. The needle was obviously a military structure predicated primarily on defence, and castles do not usually have a preponderance of entrances. Ratuth Slabuth was plainly not a popular ruler, and revolution threatened his reign of error.

There was considerable surliness on the part of the guardian demon in the reception blockhouse, although this was as likely due to the presence of De'eniroth and De'zeel as anything else; it seemed they garnered little respect amongst their peers. That offhandedness vanished on the instant that De'zeel announced—with sufficient dropped aspirates to power a family of Cockneys for six months—that the lady with all the legs was none other than Mistress Zarenyia, Devil of the Outer Darkness and Casual Severer of Limbs.

As had been the case with De'eniroth and De'zeel, this was all that was required to turn demons that looked like huge tripedal rhinoceroses crossed with praying mantises, armoured in pitted iron and carrying swords the size of windmill sails, into oleaginous waiters on discovering a crown prince with generous tipping habits has taken a table in their section. Cabal and Miss Smith tried not to look too embarrassed by all the inexpert fawning going on. Zarenyia, however, was very much in her element.

‘Boys, boys, boys!' she laughed, in this case a mild admonition rather than a declaration of her diet. ‘Don't crowd a girl. Such
rude
boys. It may come to spankings if you carry on like this much longer.'

‘Sorry, miss,' muttered the largest of the behemoths, somehow managing to blush through eighteen inches of armour plate. ‘We're just really excited to see you.'

‘She gets that a lot,' said Cabal, but no one was paying him any attention at all.

The behemoth was still talking. ‘Satan ordered your presence weeks ago, and will be very happy that you are here.'

‘Weeks ago? But, poppet, even I didn't know I'd be here weeks ago.'

The behemoth frowned, causing some of its skull armour to bend such was the puissance of even its facial muscles. ‘No, Mistress Zarenyia, we are surprised to find you here. Satan sent search parties to the outer darkness.'

‘He did?' Cabal noticed even Zarenyia's natural ebullience faltered in the face of this intelligence. ‘That's very … satanic of him. You must have lost a lot of demons doing that.'

The behemoth shrugged. It was like watching a hillock during a highly localised seismic event. ‘All of them. But you're here now, so that doesn't matter! Huzzah!'

Zarenyia cast an uncertain sideways glance at Cabal. ‘Yippee,' she said.

*   *   *