Riddle of the Seven Realms Read online

  After he was deposited at the entrance, Astron bade the djinn to wait and cautiously entered. He felt the smooth surface of time-worn stone beneath his feet—true stone of condensed matter, rather than a web of fleeting energy that merely hinted at substance. Around his head and shoulders, the gnarled tunnel walls squeezed downward in the total darkness. The solidness of the steps was a surprise and the darkness too much a reminder of the cold and depressing emptiness of the realm. But there was no other choice. Astron clasped his fingers into fists and began descending as rapidly as he could, each step less than a heart beat.

  Images of what could come to pass if indeed he did not succeed flitted through Astron’s mind—Gaspar’s rasping laugh, the small mites that crawled in the greasy stubble on the prince’s chin, his minions ripping asunder the delicate columns and domes that Elezar had taken eons to weave, demigorgons crushing the skulls of the imps in their massive hands and degutting the larger devils with searing bolts of flame.

  Astron tightened the coils of his fists. He for one was not ready for such a fate. His hatching had been less than an era ago. The great monotony did not yet dampen his will to live as it did for some of the others, who had sampled a dozen times over all that Elezar had to offer, others who would have to be goaded out of a jaded lethargy even to die. No, if and when they came for him, surrounding his slight body with stares and gloats, it would be far too soon.

  Astron grimaced. If and when they came, he hoped that for once he would have the strength of his clutch brothers, strength to deny to Gaspar any satisfaction, strength to be able to look back with unblinking eyes and stand silent, even though they pulled away his fingers and toes one by one.

  It was all because of arrogance, Astron thought. His prince had been too proud not to accept Gaspar’s challenge on the terms with which it was given. Elezar should have denied the fairness of the riddle. But he was too concerned about what the other princes would think if he refused a test in which, after all, he was supposed to be the strongest of all.

  The tunnel turned sharply to the left without warning, and Astron banged his head against a jutting overhang. His thoughts jangled back to his immediate concern. “More than a million steps in total darkness,” he muttered. “This Palodad constructs an approach of more than a million when a few hundred easily would do. Even a sublime devil guards his lair with only fifty. Fifty steps, though he might weave the essence of a rose.”

  Astron rubbed the throb in his temple with one hand while he cautiously extended his other forward. “There must be some truth to the accounts,” he said to himself. “What sane demon would dare to be so wasteful? To squander his wealth on stride after stride of featureless rock when he could occupy himself for epochs building intricate sculptures instead.”

  His question echoed unanswered down the dark tunnel and Astron paused a moment more, trying to will himself into placid composure. To approach in a state of visible apprehension would place him at an immediate disadvantage. He was, after all, the emissary of a prince. He squeezed his fists all the tighter and set a grim mask on his face. In silence, he trod the last ten thousand steps, not even bothering to count.

  Finally he reached the entrance barrier and pulled it aside. The tunnel suddenly blazed with light. Translucent membranes flicked over his eyes as he stared into the brilliance. The drone of tiny wings mixed with the slur of countless curses, creating a din that assaulted even the most insensitive ears.

  He saw the walls expand outward from where he stood to form a giant sphere, dotted with smaller globes of incandescence that banished all shadows from its interior. He stood on a ledge that circumnavigated this globe, a small pathway that gently curved and finally disappeared out of sight on both sides behind the massive constructions that filled the enclosed volume.

  Directly in front, a causeway arched from the ledge to link with the nearest of the structures. The edifice looked like some gigantic gameboard, a collection of tightly packed cubical cells built of rusty iron spars with row upon row of repeated patterns forming an immense vertical plane. Thousands of cells were stacked into a single column, and thousands of columns ranked together from left to right.

  Each cell was occupied by an imp, mostly rock gremlins with pale green skin, warted eyelids, and thick leathery wings. But here and there, Astron saw other types, waterwisps, smouldering fifenella, and pigmy afreets almost as tall as the span of his forearm.

  Every imp, regardless of type, was collared with iron and linked with short pieces of chain to the lattice. The inhabitants of each row were joined together by lengths of rope that draped from cell to cell and looped around right wrists outstretched rigidly above slumbering heads. The end of each rope terminated on a separate shaft of steel at the edge of the lattice that ran to other constructions farther back in the sphere.

  More cords dangled from shafts above each column, connecting the left wrists of the demons positioned in the same vertical line. Although all seemingly were asleep, about half had their mouths open and long dangling tongues oozed a drool onto those confined below.

  As Astron watched, a shaft on the side suddenly twitched away from the lattice, joggling the arms of the row of gremlins to which it was connected. They all sprang alert. An instant later one of the rods on the top also lurched from its resting place, waking a column as well. Another moment passed with the aroused demons tensed and eyes open wide. Then, almost as quickly as they had wakened, they returned to their rest, facial expressions the same as they had been before. They all returned, that is, except for one, the one who had been common to both row and column, the one who had had both arms tugged.

  The selected imp waited restlessly until another gremlin, free-flying and unfettered, buzzed into view to position itself in front of the lattice.

  “Bad news, mintbreath. It’s a tongueout,” the newcomer squeaked. “And from the way things are cycling, I doubt another change will come for an eon or so.”

  “Gimme a break,” the awakened imp answered. “I’m way ahead on tongueouts. I had to drool for over an eon just a few cycles ago. My jaw still aches from the effort. And I can remember my state in my head just as well as you. Wake me in an era and I will still recall whether I had been set to be in or out.”

  “Tongueout,” the hovering gremlin insisted. “Or do you want me to report you stuck? If the upkeep crew replaces you, then you will be sent to the register pit. At least here you get to sleep most of the time.”

  The imp in the lattice grimaced and then finally spat out its tongue at the messenger. With a growl he pitched his head forward on his chest, letting his body dangle from its fetters. The fluttering gremlin then flew away just before another tug on the rods aroused a fifenella and the cycle started again.

  Astron shifted his attention to other lattices nearby the first. Some were identical in construction, giant arrays of sleeping imps. In others, tall columns of sprites were bound spread-eagled with a limb stretched tight toward each corner of its cell and the fetters running from the leg of one to the arm of another. In spasmodic waves the demons twitched and shuddered, jiggling the left leg if only one arm were tugged and the right if both were stretched instead.

  In yet other cages, mighty djinns flipped from being erect to standing on their heads in response to the jabs and pokes of their neighbors next in line. Back into the recesses of the cavern the jumble of imprisoned demons filled the span of the eye, islands of symmetry joined in a chaotic web of lines, shafts, and darting imps. All of it was alive with jerk and tug, great rolling waves of activity that coursed and pulsed in patterns that could not quite be followed.

  Astron’s mind whirled. He had been prepared for strangeness. If nothing else, his many trips into the worlds of men had accustomed him to the unusual. But the expanse was too great. Never before in his own realm had he seen so much matter concentrated in one place. Countless numbers of fetters and chains, cell placed upon cell, lattice after lattice, receding into the distance. Elezar was reputed to be among the richest
of the princes, but all his fanciful domes would be lost among the massive constructs in the sphere.

  “With no matter for payment? One dares to come with no matter?” A raspy voice sounded over the noise.

  Astron looked upward and saw a platform that jutted from the wall of the sphere some hundred spans above where he stood. Descending from it in a rope-hung bucket was a demon of about his size although certainly not his shape and form.

  The posture stooped; a long curved neck cantilevered from the deep valley between bony shoulders. The scales of the face were cracked and peeling. Near the gnarled ears, some scales were missing altogether, revealing a pulsing underlayer that quivered like freshly flayed flesh. Eyes squinted out from grimy hollows, one rheumy with phlegm and the other jerking in erratic directions, independent of its mate. Emaciated arms terminated in three-clawed hands, one wrapped permanently about a crystal of some polished metal, the webbing between the fingers spread like a threadbare cape over the gleaming surface.

  “And no wings as well, I see,” the voice continued as the basket descended to eye level. “Quite presumptuous to come without wings to get you from here to there.”

  Astron stared at the demon as it slowly swung a spar from the basket over to the ledge and hobbled across. “I am unfamiliar with the tradition of this domain,” he said slowly to the advancing figure. “This is the first time I have come. I act upon the request and demand of my—”

  “What did you say?” The demon cupped his free hand behind his ear. “This is the first what?”

  “The first time,” Astron repeated. “The first time that—”

  The rest of his words were drowned in sudden laughter. The approaching demon tilted back his head and boomed with a repetitious grate, each rasp more dissonant than the last. Astron opened his mouth to speak again, but then thought better of it, waiting instead for the other finally to lapse back into silence.

  “Time,” the demon repeated with his last rasp. “Not only time but the first time. Here, hatchling, look at this.”

  The good hand reached into a small pouch hung over a pointy hip and produced a curiously shaped glass, two bulbs, one above the other with a small constricted passage between and grains of sand slowly draining from top to bottom.

  “This is time, hatchling. See it flow incessantly. In a continuous stream. Eons, eras, epochs, one after the other without seam, without division, apparently without start and finish. There is no first time, there is no last. There is only time and it is one.”

  Astron retracted his membranes and stared at the figure before him. The awe for the surroundings gnawed at his resolve. “Palodad?” he asked cautiously. “Are you the devil, Palodad, the one who reckons?”

  “I am indeed he.” The demon straightened his back slightly, his demeanor suddenly sober. “And you no doubt are the messenger of some prince who cannot see his way out of a problem. This may be your first visit, but across the eons it is but one of countless others.”

  “I come by the command of Prince Elezar,” Astron said. “He strives against Gaspar of the lightning djinns for the right of supremacy.”

  Palodad’s good eye brightened. He put away the sandglass and looked over Astron far more carefully than he had before. “Ah, Elezar, Elezar, the one who is golden,” he said slowly.

  “Yes, and as you say, I come with a riddle that is in need of its key.”

  “If Elezar cannot answer, then it must be a puzzle indeed,” Palodad said. “I have advised him once before on matters of great weight. If this is of like proportion, then a mere fistful of iron will not suffice for payment.”

  “Nevertheless, the answers the prince must know.”

  Palodad grunted. For a long moment he stared unblinkingly at Astron. Then he put away his glass and turned to hobble slowly back onto the spar. “Come,” he called over his shoulder. “Come and tell me what exactly perplexes the great Elezar so. I will elect to be flattered by his attention, even though it has been slow in coming. It certainly is about time he again has decided to ask for my aid.”

  Palodad suddenly jerked to a halt and smiled. “Yes, it is about time,” he repeated with a rasp. “About time. It could be for nothing less.” He tilted his head back and opened his mouth into a great circle. His laugh filled the air and echoed from the wall. For a dozen cycles of the nearest lattice, the demon clutched his arms to his sides, rocking back and forth, oblivious to everything around him.

  Then, as abruptly as he began, Palodad stopped and resumed his shuffle toward the bucket. “I had instructed you to follow,” he called back as he entered the basket. “Or did your prince send just an imp still afraid of its broodmother?”

  Astron looked again into the interior of the sphere, at the bound and jerking sprites. He heard again the howls of pain and maledictions. The scene troubled him greatly, far more than any mystery in the realm of men. A reluctance coursed through his stembrain, putting stiffness into his limbs when he commanded them to move.

  “I will remain untouched,” he muttered to himself. “I need only stay until I have information for the prince.” With a pace no swifter than Palodad’s he moved toward the waiting bucket.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lore of the Listmaker

  ASTRON lost track of the number of pulley baskets he rode before he finally reached Palodad’s destination, deep in the interior of the sphere. As the last bucket whisked from view, he found himself in an open-top box of stone as solid as the steps that had led to the entrance of the old demon’s lair.

  To his immediate left, in front of one of the four confining walls, a continuous belt moved on rollers and creaked off through a dark recess into the sphere beyond.

  Directly in front stood a collection of glass jars, densely packed with swarms of swirling mites. Behind them were stacks of what looked like shallow baking sheets, some piled in precarious columns and others only two or three deep littering the floor. Through an archway in the distance, Astron saw a small devil brushing a sticky glue onto the surface of one of the sheets and adding it to another stack. A cloyingly sweet odor drifted from the glue and hung heavy in the air.

  On the right, the wall was covered with tiny glowsprites, each one crammed between the limbs of his neighbors, but somehow arrayed in precise lines. The small demons winked on and off with random bursts of light across the spectrum. All the colors of the rainbow stirred in motley patterns, each imp no larger than a thumbnail, but with thousands of neighbors producing a pulsating and almost hypnotic glitter.

  “It is here that questions are composed,” Palodad said behind Astron. “Here I affix the mites to the matrix and send the instructions to my minions who await beyond.”

  “But to what purpose?” Astron turned and shook his head, unable to contain himself any longer. “Why the million steps? How can so many submit to such an existence?”

  “These are the questions of your prince?” Palodad asked.

  “No, no, not these. His is much more profound.” Astron regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips. They revealed that Elezar’s messenger was not totally unimpressed by what he saw and hinted therefore that Palodad’s power might be the greater. The prince would not be pleased.

  “But nevertheless I am a cataloguer,” Astron added quickly. “It is my nature to ask so that I can observe and record.”

  “A cataloguer. Indeed.” Palodad paused and squinted. “No doubt the lack of wings and protruding fangs gives you greater satisfaction with your amusement.”

  Astron turned away his eyes. Things were not starting well at all. “I am, in fact, a splendorous djinn,” he said softly. “At least my clutch brethren were. But I was hatched without wings and grew in stature no greater than you see me now.”

  He hesitated a moment and looked back at Palodad. “But no matter that I cannot weave great cataclysms or burst assunder condensed rock with the wave of my hand. I am a cataloguer and a good one. I filed my fangs myself so that the effect would be complete. With hood and cape I have p
assed among men, raising not a modicum of suspicion. And yes, I even managed the domination of a strong-willed one or two.”

  “No doubt,” Palodad said. “Even the smallest imp declares he has a few wizards under his spell.”

  “What I say is true. I have no need to speak otherwise.”

  “It does not matter.” Palodad waved the words aside. “I have little use for the boasts of others in any case. The workings of my domain tell me far more of what has happened and what yet will come to pass.” He paused and stared at Astron. “Perhaps, as a cataloguer, you might appreciate that more than the others. Tell me your name. We will see what I know of the followers of Elezar the prince.”

  “It is Astron—Astron the one who walks.”

  “Ah, Astron. It will be easy enough,” Palodad said, turning to pick up one of the metal sheets from the floor. “Not thousands of syllables that record all of your exploits like some who have come.”

  He placed the sheet on the belt and pulled a lever to stop it moving. Then he turned the lid on one of the jars at his feet, releasing a cloud of mites. Moving with a quickness that surprised Astron, the old demon began plucking the tiny imps from the air one by one and affixing them to the sticky surface of the sheet. With the metal ball in his other hand he smashed them flat so that they would stay. In what seemed like an instant he had immobilized several precise rows of mites, some with their heads aligned along the lines and others perpendicular to it.

  Palodad surveyed his handiwork for a moment and then kicked the empty jar aside, waving the unused mites away. He hobbled back into the stacks behind them and returned a moment after with several more sheets, these already filled with imprisoned imps. He formed a chain of the trays on the belt. With one final grunt, he pulled the lever to start them moving toward the slit in the wall.