Chapter 1

To tell you their names would be to tell too much. Qui habet aures audiendi audiat. Most of us would find their names impossible to pronounce anyway, though within the logic of their tongues we might render them something like "Hermes" and "Pyrrhus" in our own language. Of course, I'm not sure it is technically true to say that the languages we humans speak are actually "our" languages. Did I ever mention that linguists and neurologists seem to think that human beings don't have the faculties needed to invent language, that it appears to have sprung full-blown into existence, as though revealed from Heaven? But I digress...

Hermes and Pyrrhus were mere foot soldiers, mere border guards of the Upper Regions. One did not expect them to last long; one did not assume them to be good for more than one or, at most, two battles. Which is why, it is worth noting, names like Hermes and Pyrrhus have belonged to many thousands, perhaps millions, of demons; because whenever a demon dies, his name gets passed on to the next one that springs out of the flame or gets ground out of the rock.

There had been a skirmish, not unlike the many daily skirmishes between angels and demons. Several of Hermes's and Pyrrhus's comrades-in-arms had been vaporized in the clash, blasted by the angel's lightning sword. Hermes himself had nearly been thrown into some abyss after being knocked back by a swipe of the angel's left wing, when there was an explosion. Pyrrhus had somehow managed to get in close while the angel was contending with about a half a dozen demons armed with bone pikes, and set off a nail bomb right under the angel's toes. "Back to the light!" he had shouted as he took cover behind an immense rock. When the dust cleared, everyone was dead, except Hermes, Pyrrhus, and the angel, who was merely unconscious, its body bleeding and perforated in numerous places by the lovely shrapnel from Pyrrhus's ingenious, infernal device.

Hermes says something like "Holy mercy! The blessed thing's still breathing! It's still alive!" He means to kill it right on the spot. He shoves his jagged spear into its pretty, golden face, and means to thrust the point of the spear right through its skull and splatter its brains out the crown of its head and put that flickering halo right out.

But Pyrrhus reaches out and grabs Hermes and says "Wait! I've never seen one this close, alive!"

"Don't want to!" shouts Hermes, "It wakes up, we die!"

"Not if we do this!" says Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus grabs the angel by the face, and before Hermes can cry out or try to stop him, he pokes his thumb claws into the angel's eye sockets and pops its eyes like two bloody grapes. Pop, pop!

The angel cries out and starts to thrash about, but Hermes realizes, all the power has gone out of this one, like the air out of a balloon. Pyrrhus calls for him to help with the chains, and he does, and shortly the angel is trussed up like a bug in a spider web. Hermes eyes it warily. It appears to be conscious now, its mouth grimly set, its muscles tense, as though it would burst the chains that hold it tight.

"How did you know?" asks Hermes, half incredulous.

"I have a cousin who lives down in the Lower Mid Regions, who said his commander heard it from the Myerkensicka. Their power is in their seeing. Put the eyes out and no more power."

That was how Hermes and Pyrrhus had managed to do something no one they knew in all the infernal regions had ever done before: capture an angel alive. But what to do with such a prize? There was a fair amount of arguing. Their unit had all been killed off except for them. According to the regulations they were supposed to report to their next ranking commander to be reassigned to another squad. This had been Hermes's second battle and Pyrrhus's third, and here they were, still alive. Maybe an accomplishment like capturing an angel alive could even merit them a promotion. At least that is what Hermes kept arguing over and over. But Pyrrhus, for some unfathomable reason, insisted that they not report to their next ranking commander. No one would look for them, everyone would just assume they were dead. Now they were "free," and in possession of something incredibly interesting.

Technically, there's no concept in the demonic tongues of "freedom." What Pyrrhus actually said might better be rendered "permanently in between commanders." The way he said it, the sound of it, made Hermes's guts roil with terror. To him, anything close to what we think of as freedom sounded equivalent to death, and a slow, torturous one at that. But Pyrrhus was older than him and stronger than him, and over the course of his last two battles Hermes had come to depend on Pyrrhus, always feeling a strange kind of warmth when he was close to him. It was only that warmth that kept Hermes from fleeing in fright.

Pyrrhus says, "The average demon springs into existence, joins the feast of souls for a few cycles; and then is snuffed out; blasted or burned, frozen or shattered in an attack; or tortured and eaten by some older, slyer, nastier demon than himself, whom he's displeased through some inadvertent fault; or starved to death because the feasts of souls don't come often enough in the Upper Regions; or poisoned or diseased; or enslaved and tormented by Surfacers until some angel -- cursed be the light! -- snuffs us out or an ancient one punishes us for being weak enough to be captured. We follow orders without question. Our commanders abuse us, even as we risk our necks fighting these things, that smash us practically by looking at us. But doesn't the fire of intelligence burn in us as much as it does in these things? How do we permit them to make our existence a misery?"

"So isn't that all the more reason -- cursed be the light! -- to kill the wretched thing?" asks Hermes. Pyrrhus stops him again from crushing the head of the helpless angel with his spear.

"Have you ever been to the Lower Regions?" asks Pyrrhus.

"Once the commander sent me on an errand to the Six Thousand Three Hundred Fifty-Ninth Gate," replies Hermes.

"Pah! I said the Lower Regions!"

"It's the lowest I've ever been."

"I once made it to the Sixty Seventh Gate."

"You're lying! That's impossible! Even the highest ranking commander of the Upper Regions would have no authority to send you past the 601st Gate."

"Who says I was under orders?" says Pyrrhus with a wicked gleam in his eyes, and Hermes feels the mad terror rising again as he apprehends the full recklessness of his companion.

"You're a lying son of a succubus! You wouldn't have lasted a second!"

"Oh, I lasted. And I've done a good many things most demons wouldn't dream of," says Pyrrhus.

"I should have done with it, and report you!" says Hermes, and he really means it, though a strange hunger tugs at him, and Pyrrhus can tell from the hesitation in his voice and the anguish in his eyes that he won't. "So what's your point?" Hermes asks.

"The lower one goes, the more ancient the demons. But do you know how many cycles old the oldest of them is? I met one who claimed to have survived six hundred fifty-nine cycles, and he claimed to have known the oldest devil alive, over two thousand cycles old. But no matter how old they are, none know of the first old demon. None know where we came from or what is the meaning of our sad existence. But do you know how old these angels – curse the light they bring! – may be? Perhaps millions of cycles!"

Hermes blinks in awe, and stares with new found dread and respect at the prisoner sitting stonily in front of them.

Chapter 2

We imagine angels having generally anthropomorphic features, with wings to symbolize powers of movement and will, and halos, intelligence and holiness. They of course look nothing like the pretty pictures we see of them in stained glass windows and classical paintings, though they are capable of appearing to us in whatever form we believe most pleasing or likely. Or is it that we humans have a remarkable tendency to see things only the way we want to see them? What angels truly are -- now there's a question. What we can say for certain is that they are beings of great power.

Even pierced with the demonic shrapnel, bound cruelly with barbed chains, and gory holes where its eyes used to be, the angel was, even Hermes had to concede, beautiful beyond belief. Time and time again their eyes were drawn almost involuntarily to its golden features, its graceful frame. It stirred emotions in them they had never experienced before, emotions that stirred still other feelings of vulnerability, anxiety, and longing.

"So, we're keeping it," says Hermes, "What do we do with it?"

"I don't suppose you speak Angelic, do you?" says Pyrrhus.

Hermes would have laughed at Pyrrhus, but for the itchy feeling of dread he couldn't seem to suppress in the presence of this creature.

"And I don't suppose this thing understands a word of the Demonic tongues," Pyrrhus adds. Then he pauses for a moment. A thought comes to him. "Latine scisne?"

"Mori me malim, vipera!" replies the angel.

“It sounds angry,” says Hermes, nervously.

“Yes,” says Pyrrhus, “But it speaks Latin.”

Of course Pyrrhus now asks himself, "What do you suppose its name is?"

Now you would probably take it as an insult to your intelligence if I told you how important the true name of an angel or a demon is when it comes to the practice of magic. For you of course already know that true magic involves the commanding of spirits, and the more powerful the spirit you command, the more powerful the magic. What you may or may not appreciate is how very difficult it is to apprehend the true name of a demon or an angel, no matter how low in rank. For these creatures, knowing the power that knowledge of their name gives over them, guard their names very jealously. The older and more powerful the angel or demon, the more carefully and cruelly they guard it, for it is the names of the ancient ones that are the most sought after. Knowing the true name of a powerful old demon or angel can be a dangerous thing. It is like having a tiger in a cage, and you had better make sure that you keep the cage locked at all times if you wish to stay alive. I once heard of a vicious old demon who deliberately let slip a false name, so that when a sorcerer or witch haplessly tried to conjure him through it, he could kill them just for having the audacity of trying to know his true name. True names are the currency of the unseen world, like gold, silver and diamonds. They are what make some rich and powerful and others poor and despised.

I might add that humans should not confuse the mundane designations we call names with our True Names. You see, I might tell you that my name is John, and, indeed, that is the name that appears on my birth certificate and the name by which I have been known to my family and friends since birth. But that is not my true name. No, most humans have no idea what their own true name is. If we did, we would not be the pathetic, aimless, powerless creatures that we are. The beginning of wisdom for a human is to learn her or his true name, because it will tell you who and what you truly are and it will give you power over you.

Pyrrhus had listened very carefully during the battle with the angel, for angels have been known to invoke their own names when they are hard pressed, as a way of redoubling their strength. It is a desperate move, usually attempted only in the face of death, for only death would be worse than letting one's true name slip to a pack of demons. If angels use their name under such circumstances, they whisper it so low that no one but they can hear it. But Pyrrhus had very sharp hearing, and when he had slid in close to set off his clever, nasty nail bomb under the feet of the angel, he had heard some name hissing under the breath of the angel. With the commotion and clamor of the battle, he had heard only the first syllable, "Me-" and the very end of the name “-th,” but that gave him something to work with.

Speaking in Latin, he says to his captive, “That was a good fight you put up. Very impressive. But I don’t know how you expected to pass lower than the Ten Thousandth Gate without running into more trouble than you could handle. You and your friends would do best to stay clear of these regions and just leave us alone.”

The angel replies, “You had better kill me now, because the first moment you relax your guard, you’ll be dead.”

The angel’s reply clearly has its intended effect on Hermes, who immediately tenses up and begins to twitch nervously around the face. “I told you!” Hermes hisses.

Pyrrhus holds his hand up, motioning for silence. The angel knows things that could be very useful. The only thing it fears is that this information can somehow be manipulated or tortured out of it, so it is trying to provoke them into killing it.

“I’m not afraid of you,” says Pyrrhus, “I was, but I’m not any more. No, if there was anything in your power to do, you would already have done it by now, Meziketh.”

Now it is the angel’s turn to tense up in fear, to jerk its head ever so slightly in the direction of Pyrrhus’s voice. Not the reaction Pyrrhus would have expected, had his guess at the angel’s name been correct. No, if this angel were truly named “Meziketh,” Pyrrhus’s power over him would be immediately evident. But there is definitely fear now. The guess was close enough that the angel now realizes the demon has heard far too much for comfort.

“Or is it Merihoth? Medichath? Melikith?” says Pyrrhus, studying the creature’s every move. But it has steeled itself now. It knows what game Pyrrhus is playing, and has grown impassive, its features swathed in defiance and hate.

Pyrrhus thinks. He scratches his head. He remembers those whispers from the battle, replays them again and again. Suddenly a light dawns in his eyes. “Melioth!” he shouts.

The angel’s stony features suddenly melt. Its taut frame tumbles in surrender, as it exhales a gasp of surprise and anguish.

“That’s it, that’s your name, isn’t it?” exults Pyrrhus, “That’s what I heard! Melioth!”

The angel’s broken, grief-stricken expression tells the whole story.

“Old friend,” says Pyrrhus to Hermes, “We have ourselves an angel.”

Chapter 3

Hell is a place where things get lost. The entry into Hell is always some discarded place, like the corner of a closet where you've left forgotten things; or a hallway at the mall that is always abandoned and empty; or an old bus stop where the buses never run any more. It is the kind of place where, when you find yourself there, you feel the same panic a small child feels when she realizes her parents have left her behind at the train station. There are millions of such places in the world, and one always passes through them without intending to.

The passages through Hell all lead steeply down, and there are no guard rails. It's like clinging to the side of a mountain several thousand feet up, with nothing between you and the pit but a wild wind that will tear you away from your footing. There are many snaky bends in the passages, and at each bend a fork, and some precious part of you going down the fork you did not choose to follow. The unluckiest passages lead to the feasts of souls, which is where we are boiled, dismembered, and eaten alive.

Hermes and Pyrrhus ate their fill of the flesh of their fallen comrades and then strapped a carcass or two to their backs. Then they each took a hold of the end of one of the barbed chains tightly binding Melioth, and dragged him away over burning, jagged rocks and down smoke-filled stairs. The descent was fast, like that of stones tumbling down the side of a mountain into airless, pitch dark places, hot as kilns. Down they flew, until they had slipped away into one of a million million lost places in Hell, where even demons forget the way back and starve to death.

Such a lost place was good for hiding treasure and hiding oneself from wrathful commanders. Demons who chose a solitary existence away from the Gates of Hell might survive if they had keys to some unwatched passage to the surface and could quietly traffic smuggled souls in the demon black markets. Or perhaps they had collected enough names of lesser demons to establish their own fiefdoms of slaves, raiders, smugglers and thieves; these might be tolerated if they provided useful services or coveted pleasures to nearby commanders. Pyrrhus considered the possibility of using Melioth to bargain for valuable concessions or names, perhaps founding his own fiefdom. But deep down inside he believed Melioth was the key to something much more interesting and powerful, something new and unimaginable and exciting.

After Hermes had spied out all the passages within a rotation and established that they were quite alone, and both had drawn sufficient rest from the darkness and the silence, Pyrrhus began his vigil of questions. Knowing the name of Melioth, he knew, only gave him power over the angel in degrees. He would have to learn how to use the name, learn its powers and its weaknesses, what it did not mean as well as what it meant. But for the time being he could use it to compel answers to his questions. This was all he needed at first.

"How old are you?" he asks.

"Old enough that an abortion like you will never have true power over me."

"Tell me how many cycles you have seen!"

"Less than one."

Pyrrhus ponders this riddle. He knows it is impossible that this angel is not many cycles old, an age approaching infinity. He walks the magic circle again, speaks the name from the eighty-ninth to the ninety-seventh path. Each mystical regression gives him more power, he can tell by the way the angel winces with each permutation of M E L I O T H. Pyrrhus thinks he knows the answer now.

"How many cycles are there?" he asks triumphantly.

"Only one," whispers the angel.

"Very good!" Pyrrhus hisses. He has pulled the first thread of the riddle loose. He would like to keep pulling, but he knows if he his not careful it will tighten again unexpectedly and he will be caught. Best to work on a different thread first.

"Where do you come from?" asks Pyrrhus.

"From the bosom of God," says the angel, through gritted teeth.

"What is God?" asks Pyrrhus.

"It is impossible to describe in Latin," replies the angel.

"Try," says Pyrrhus.

"Whatever I said would be less than the truth."

"I don't doubt that half of what you tell me is lies. But they are interesting lies, and the truth can be wound out of them eventually," Pyrrhus says, "And at any rate, you don't seem to have any trouble speaking with humans about God in Latin, so oblige me. Tell me the lies you tell them."

"I'll be damned if I defile the name of God by speaking of Him to vermin like you," the angel insists.

Pyrrhus walks the magic circle again, and speaks the name from the ninety-seventh to the one hundred first, and again from the one hundred first to the one hundred third, until the angel is in an agony from resisting Pyrrhus's will, and he cannot help but answer the questions as they were asked. Tap, tap, tap.

"God is the creator," the angel says, wincing with pain, "All things that are, owe their existence to Him. All things begin and end in Him. All things draw their life and purpose from Him, and all that turns away from Him becomes aimlessness and death."

"You say that I -- even I -- draw my life and purpose from God? And yet, I've only ever heard the name of God on the lips of hapless humans, as we lead them down to be devoured and as they suffer the agonies of the feasts of souls. And I must say, I've never gained a very favorable impression of him from what I've heard. A lot about forsaking and hate and punishment and what not. But it's always made me curious."

It must be the stress of captivity and blindness, the pain of the barbed chains tearing at its flesh, and the numbing effect of the magic, because the blasphemous words of the demon are apparently more than the angel can take, and it blurts out angrily, "You know nothing of God, because you scum are lying rebels against Him! Children of darkness and followers of Satan!"

Of course, the way the angel says these things seems to imply that all of this is a very bad thing. But Pyrrhus is immediately intrigued, because he is not lying when he says he has only ever heard mention of God in the curses of the damned. He has always assumed God was some great leader of the Surfacers who had betrayed them; and not even a leader of all the Surfacers, for his name was not by any means on all of their lips. But now this angel says that all -- even he, even Pyrrhus -- draw their life and purpose from God, and that apparently Pyrrhus's purpose is to rebel against him. That intrigues him. And what intrigues him more is the mention of this being called Satan, who is a leader of the rebels. If hope is a word that can apply to demons, in this moment hope is what springs up in Pyrrhus's black, demonic heart, for this Satan must be powerful, wonderful and ancient indeed to arouse such curses and hatred from an angel and to be such a thorn in the side of God.

Now a desperate, wicked question gleams in the mind of Pyrrhus. "How old is God?" he asks.

The angel groans and rages, and swears that it will commit no more sacrilege by having intercourse about God with a demon. Pyrrhus walks the circle and speaks the name from the one hundred third to the one hundred seventh, then to the one hundred ninth, then to the one hundred thirteenth path. But this time his magic seems to be in vain, and all he can get out of the angel is, "There is no answer to that question! Time itself is contained within Him!" Pyrrhus takes this for a lie, but it seems the angel will die before telling him more, so he leaves it at that, and breaks off the interrogation for the time being. There will be time later to speak more paths, use greater power against the angel.

During all of this, Hermes is keeping watch at the end of the passage leading to the pit where he and Pyrrhus have made their hideaway. He is listening with only one ear to the steady tap, tap, tap of Pyrrhus's magic, the drone of his interrogation, and the echoes of the angel's cries for mercy, which amuses him in spite of their current circumstances. With the other ear he is listening for the sounds of demons or lost souls wandering the passages of Hell. "Best to be on the watch for trouble," he thinks, "or a spare meal." He wonders if angels can starve, if they will have to find some way to feed it.

All this thinking about feeding makes him hungry, and when Hermes returns to the hideaway to snack on what's left of his former comrades, Pyrrhus says to him in their own demonic tongue, "I have learned that there is a Prince of Demons and that the angels call him Satan. "

Chapter 4

Now, dear searcher of Knowledge, you are doubtless clicking your tongue and calling me a fool, and asking yourself how it is possible that two foot soldiers in the Army of Hell have never heard of Satan. I admit, it could be that the fellow I heard this story from was lying, and it seems just the kind of prevarication Old Scratch would delight in seeing spread about the Nether Regions. Or another possibility -- and anyone familiar with the smell of brimstone will attest to the likelihood of this -- is that true knowledge is more precious than diamonds in a realm dominated by mayhem, starvation, forgetfulness and ignorance, and most lesser demons really never have heard of Satan because Hell is ruled by information-hoarding warlords. But there is a third possibility.

The interrogation continued for five rotations, until Pyrrhus had spoken the name of Melioth as far as the two hundred eighty-first path, and was satisfied that he had extracted as much as he was going to extract from the angel about Satan. The more he heard, the more the story disquieted him. Pyrrhus wondered if his magic had driven the angel mad. But even if it was madness, each new revelation was more intriguing to him than the last.

Angels were the first creations of God, Melioth said, emanations of His power, told their own names and endowed with free will. Demons were what Melioth called "fallen angels." And the greatest, brightest and strongest angel of all had been Satan. After the "First Great War of Heaven" they had been cast out of the dwelling place of God, and scattered throughout the billions and billions of refuges of mud, rock and gas afloat in the limitless oceans of sky surrounding the surface, whence Satan carries on his war against the Creator. Many had lost their memory of their former existence because, dwelling away from the light of God, their spirits had atrophied. Melioth could say nothing of where the Arch-rebel Satan was to be found. But Pyrrhus supposed he was somewhere out there, beyond the oceans of sky. The great Leader of the demonic cause could certainly not be here, among the fools who called themselves the Powers of the Earth, or would they still suffer in such a sorry state of disarray?

Pyrrhus and Hermes spent many hours arguing about the meaning of what the angel had told them.

Hermes exclaims, "Only the maddest liar would claim there to be inhabitable worlds beyond the surface!"

Pyrrhus replies, "On the contrary, only such bold explanations can give meaning to the order of things above, and the nature of the angels!"

Hermes counters, "But if there is a great leader of the demons, what business is it of ours? Surely our commanders know of him, and are taking orders directly from him already. We are mixing with things beyond our ken. Outside the Gates we are cut off. We should turn ourselves in to a commander, turn the captive over to them. Surely they are better equipped to decipher its lies than we are."

Pyrrhus replies, "The commanders are only interested in what names the angel knows, and in gaining favors by feeding him to the ancient ones. Beyond that... I have been to the Lower Regions. It’s not the way you think. The ancient ones are primitive. They are like giant mouths without brains. Their sole desire is for the feasts and for eating, not rebelling, not fighting and not uniting. In any event, whether they know of Satan or not, there is nothing for us there."

Pyrrhus's words fill Hermes with the usual combination of dread and longing all demons feel at any mention of the Lower Regions. But he asks, "How do you know your great Satan is not like the ancient ones, but even more so?"

Pyrrhus replies, "The angels call him 'Satan' because it means 'Adversary.' He is the only one they consider a worthy opponent."

Hermes says, "The angel's lies are having a dangerous effect on you." But as he says it, even he begins to wonder: What if it were true?

During Pyrrhus’s interrogation of Melioth, Hermes had been exploring more of the passages in the vicinity of their hideaway. He found at least nine different types of runes, which meant that in this desolate district, there was considerable smuggling. Of course, without the key to any of the runes, there was no way of knowing where the smugglers were. That meant danger, and Pyrrhus still had not converted their captive into any kind of advantage worth bargaining with.

Pyrrhus had learned as much as he could from the angel, and from its compatriots there was not much hope of anything but instant incineration. But the Surfacers had been tutored by the angels. And Pyrrhus knew it was possible for demons to communicate with them. They knew of God. Pyrrhus had to find out what they might know of Satan. And in an area with so much smuggling, there were almost surely numerous gates to the surface nearby. But communicating with the surface, controlled as it was by angels, was a risky, dangerous course.

Pyrrhus would have preferred to plan such a course of action carefully, but events did not permit it. The demon squad arrived suddenly, as always. Hermes had been keeping watch at the head of the passage, and fortunately heard the hissing and slithering of their movement from far enough away to have time to race back and warn Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus had rigged a number of nail bombs for just such an eventuality, for which he activated the trips. He put the angel under a command of silence, and he and Hermes armed themselves with fire guns and waited.

The angel had no choice but to remain silent. Pyrrhus’s control over him had grown too strong. But as is always the case with name magic, a determined victim can find some way to thwart the intentions of their captors. Though the angel had been deprived of most of its power by the loss of its eyes, it still knew some magic. The demons had bound it tightly with the barbed chain, but enough of one hand was free for it to make the “shout!” signal to the nearby stones. The stones began shouting, a high-pitched, squealing stone shout, just as the demon squad was approaching the section of the passage rigged with Pyrrhus’s nail bombs. It took a split second for Pyrrhus to realize what had happened. He saw the angelic hand-sign, and sliced the angel’s hand right off with a bone blade. The instant the angel’s hand was cut, the racket ceased. But it was too late.

Pyrrhus and Hermes heard the squad commander shout a few orders, and then silence. To their horror, the passage was rocked by three loud explosions, as Pyrrhus’s bombs were set off ineffectually by a shower of weapons fire from up the passage. Had the squad not been warned, they likely all would have perished in Pyrrhus’s trap. There was still one bomb left unexploded, right at the entrance to the hideaway, and it went off as demons rushed out of the passage, but it killed only seven.

Pyrrhus and Hermes had taken cover behind a large rock, and fired their weapons at the surviving demons, killing another three. Two of the three surviving demons, including the squad commander, rushed Hermes and Pyrrhus in their hiding places, while one demon hovered uncertainly near the entrance. In the fight that ensued, Pyrrhus narrowly missed being decapitated when he dodged a blast from the commander’s fire gun. As he dodged, he tumbled backwards, accidentally firing his weapon. The powerful blast from his own gun killed both the commander and the other demon, and sent the third demon fleeing up the passage for its life. When the smoke cleared Pyrrhus realized it had also mortally wounded Hermes.

Pyrrhus was hungry, so he ate his fill of the squad commander, cracking open his skull to eat the brains, and then cutting open his belly for the heart and viscera. Sometimes residual memories in the recently dead could be absorbed in the feast, and Pyrrhus was immediately aware that the commander of the nearby Eight Thousand Nine Hundred Fifty-First Gate had been ordered to clean up the entire area of smugglers. An entire additional six cohorts had been transferred to his command for this purpose, and he had sent a squad to Pyrrhus’s hideaway after hearing rumors of activity there from a recently captured smuggler about two renegade demons and a very strange captive.

“We’ve been spied!” says Pyrrhus with dismay.

There were no other memories left, and there was no time to speculate about why such commands had emanated from the Lower Regions. Pyrrhus gathered the best ammunition and weapons from among the dead. Onto his back he gently strapped Hermes, who was terribly scorched from head to toe and only barely breathing. Then he grabbed Melioth by the chains wrapped around his feet, and dragged him off, up the passage and away.

Pyrrhus kept running, always upwards. For several rotations he ran without stopping to eat or rest, until the passages grew cooler and moister, signaling their approach to the surface. Finally, he found an underground cave where water seeping through the rocks over millennia had formed a thicket of stalactites and stalagmites, and columns of rippling, wet stone. There he collapsed, at the end of his endurance, putting the angel under a command of motionlessness as well as silence, and tending Hermes.

His comrade’s breath has grown so slight, he seems almost lifeless. Not sure Hermes can hear him any more, Pyrrhus says, “We’ve gone this far. We might as well gamble. The surface it is!”

Being eaten alive is the most honorable death a demon can receive, so Pyrrhus begins on Hermes while there is still time. He begins with the ceremonial binding. Then begins the feast, the right foot first, then the crown of the head, then the left foot, then the right hand, then the left hand. He’ll strip flesh from the sides, giving Hermes as much time as possible before eating the heart.

As he eats, he speaks both to Hermes and himself: “This last part is the most difficult. Major gates will be occupied by commanders. We need a lesser, secret gate. Many of these will be no less fiercely guarded by smugglers. But there are some truly lost, forgotten gates, waiting for us to find them. If only we can find them!”

Hermes begins the agonies, and Pyrrhus knows it is time. He plunges his claws into Hermes’s chest, cracking it open, and tears the still beating heart out with his teeth. As he chews and the sweet life blood trickles down his throat, there is the usual stillness one feels only when the feasting is done the traditional way, the sudden sense of urgent clarity. It is like melting, like having every boundary between flesh and spirit dissolve, and the awareness that we are part of everything around us and everything part of us.

Then Pyrrhus is suddenly aware of numbers: 1 4 6 9 2 1. It’s the name of a gate, a secret gate. In his mind he sees, in his bones he feels the direction, the path.

Then the clarity fades, the cold, lonely sense of self returns. The unity that was Hermes is gone, only a carcass left, food for demons. Now only the memory of the number and the knowledge of the gate remains, and Pyrrhus realizes that his friend’s dying soul has reached deep into the earth and left him with a gift.

“Thank you!” Pyrrhus cries, “I know it went against your better judgment! I know you feared we were betraying the old, solemn pledges. But I swear I will honor you with this knowledge! I will fight till the end for the salvation of all demons! Farewell!”

Somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the planet, another demon named Hermes is ground out of rock.

Chapter 5

Most, except the very most experienced practitioners of the black arts, do not appreciate that no gate of Hell can ever be opened from one side only. It is not that this fact does not become quickly evident to anyone who has ever opened a gate. It is that, given our culture's abhorrence for everything demonic, those attracted to the dark arts tend to be motivated more by anti-social impulses than a true desire for knowledge. They therefore crave the sense of power it gives them to think that they and they alone have opened a gateway into Hell. Most demons have no interest in correcting this misapprehension, since an arrogant sorcerer who believes he is in complete control is much easier to manipulate than a humbled sorcerer who has been disabused of such illusions. The truth is that a summoner of demons is equally summoned by demons.

Pyrrhus and his captive, bound under enough spells of compulsion that it could barely flutter a single feather of its wings, began their long vigil under the shadow of the lost One Hundred Forty-Six Thousand Nine Hundred Twenty-First Gate. Pyrrhus rationed Hermes’s carcass very carefully, as there were no guarantees about how long they might wait. He cast the spells of opening and chanted the invocation of the name of the gate again and again, day and night, night and day, until his mind and his tongue were numbed by it, stopping only briefly once every rotation to rest and eat just enough to sustain himself for more magic. It had been seventeen rotations, Pyrrhus had been out of food for at least five rotations, and was growing dangerously weak, would likely not survive another five, when someone on the other side spoke the words and the gate cracked open.

The speaker of the words, Calvin M. Smith, had been attracted to what is commonly referred to as “the occult” since he was a teenager. It had the allure that only the forbidden can have to a boy raised by repressive religious parents.

He had trifled for a time with various forms of New Age Paganism, Wicca, Rainbow Gatherings, and God knows what else. That stuff lost its appeal to him once he realized that it was embraced primarily by gentle souls full of romantic notions about the Goddess and earth wisdom and what not. He loved that the God-fearing folk of Oakland Heights Evangelical Free Church would have been appalled at his frolicking naked in a meadow, hugging trees, smoking pot, painting his genitals bright green, and chanting praises to somebody other than Yahweh. But you hang around long enough with people for whom that’s no big deal, and it gets boring.

The Church of Satan seemed promising until Calvin learned that they didn’t really worship Satan at all. They only saw him as some abstract symbol of self-assertion. That was as muddle-headed, he thought, as liberal Christian ministers preaching God is nothing more than a symbol of love. Why bother?

He had almost given up on finding a kind of Satanism that lived up to his expectations as an Evangelical Christian, when he happened upon a book called The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, by a priest named Montague Summers. The good Reverend had been so impressed by his own researches, that he started a one-man campaign to reinstate the death penalty for witches in his native England. He documented hundreds of cases of bestiality, grave robbing, shape shifting, cannibalism, vampirism, abortion, child sacrifice, mass murder, bathing in human blood, etc., all committed by sorcerers and witches for the greater glory of their master Satan. Summers had conveniently provided a detailed bibliography, allowing the dedicated reader to locate all of the major works on black magic. Calvin used it as a roadmap for personal study.

He had been rather excited about the breakthroughs he had made lately in his studies. Most of the great primers on black magic are about fifty-three percent horseshit. Truly learning from them takes persistence. One is constantly forced to unlearn everything one thought one knew as one digs deeper into the sources, and most people give up early, concluding that it is nothing but a mind trap for fools. But one thing I can say in Calvin’s favor – I actually met the lad once – is that he was relentless. He had found buried in a corner of an old used book store in Tacoma a worm-eaten pamphlet on divination, with a short chapter on “Portals,” and ever since reading it had had a series of bizarre dreams.

The dreams always ended with him standing in a hallway, looking at the door of an apartment with the improbable number “146921.” The hallway was always in some dark basement, lit only by a single flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling, no windows and a dank smell. There was an old radio at the end of the hall, one of those big antiques that were popular back in the 1930s, crackling with strange voices speaking in a frightening, incomprehensible tongue. When he looked at the dial, it too was turned to channel “146921.” Calvin knew that such dreams were the key to something incredible, though as of yet he had no idea where to go or how to proceed. He could only study the text on portals again and again.

But some seventeen days after he had first found the book, he was making a delivery to an old warehouse on the south side of town. (He had a part-time job working for a courier service.) He wandered up and down long corridors looking for a particular office, and somebody directed him to a staircase where, he found only after the door slammed behind him, all the doors were locked except the one from the basement. As soon as he opened the door to the basement, he recognized the hallway, the same as in his dream. Well, almost the same. More junk cluttering the walls and corners: old ladders, moldy boxes, damp rags smelling of paint thinner. But sitting on an old stand was the antique radio (though quite dead). And there was the door.

There was, of course, no number on the door. Calvin stops and stares. The text on portals had called for a “key” and a “place of power,” but had said nothing about how to find either. He had wondered if that was why the text was located at the end of a dissertation on divination. But here he stands, and he can feel the power of this place. The door before him is not so much closed as pregnant. He pulls a small piece of chalk out of his pocket and draws the magic circle on the floor, with the appropriate sigils and the numbers 1 4 6 9 2 1. It does not for one moment occur to him that just because he can do something does not mean he should do something. He speaks the words and the door cracks open.

Pyrrhus’s very first thought as he climbs up into the cool, bright thinness of the surface world is that he is famished. Here stands before him one of these frail Surfacers. He has seen them many times before, dragged in chains down to the feasts of souls, their eyes wide with terror and their howls of agony echoing up through the passages of Hell. This one seems somehow clottier and heavier than he is used to seeing them, and then he realizes, it is in its native environment, and still entangled within its carapace of mud. Pyrrhus is fascinated.

Its lips move oddly, thinks Pyrrhus, it is trying to speak to him. Its eyes are full of amazement. He can hear its tickly, whispery voice, but he can’t understand a word it is saying.

“If I do not eat soon, I will die,” says Pyrrhus to the Surfacer in his politest Latin.

It nearly leaps out of its skin at the sound of Pyrrhus’s voice.

That was the end of Calvin M. Smith. Pyrrhus ate him on the spot, leaving little more than some blood splatters and a piece of gristle or two on the floor. There were strange thoughts and memories in the young man that the demon digested with relish. It encouraged Pyrrhus that Master Smith had been longing for knowledge of Satan. It confirmed his suspicion that many more knew of the great demon leader up here on the surface than down below.

I dare say he’ll eventually learn what he came to learn, if he hasn’t already. Because we humans don’t have the life span and the memory of angels; but unlike demons, we do have records and history – a kind of collective memory – that spans back thousands of years. Pyrrhus is a persistent, resourceful fellow. I’m sure he’ll find something eventually.

Of course, I was intrigued by the story mainly for what it implies if it’s true, not that I’m sure it is. Like I said, the fellow who told it to me could be lying. But on the off chance he wasn’t, I’d keep an eye out for a young, handsome fellow or a beautiful young woman who’s unusually curious about the Prince of Darkness and is often seen with a blind friend leaning on his or her arm. You see, when we humans see demons we have a tendency to see only what we want to see.