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"Lord."

There was a faint rustling in the darkness, as the Lord bent towards him. The creature, Kratak knew, would be able to see him perfectly clearly; the Lords of Hell could do anything they wanted.

"Do you know why I have summoned you, Demon Master?" The Lord’s voice was a drumming inside Kratak’s head, vibrating like an earthquake in a distant sea.

"I have not been told, Lord." Kratak had an idea why, but wouldn’t, of course, disclose that fact to the Lord. If the unseen creature on the throne imagined Kratak was privy to a leak, it would not hesitate to order Kratak’s body ripped apart, his individual energy patterns shredded and turned inside out for whatever knowledge could be gleaned from them. The Lords could not afford leaks.

"The Salamander men outside grow bolder, Demon Master." The Lord’s voice hummed inside Kratak’s adamantine skull. "Caravans are ambushed by the day, and annihilated. At night, the Abyssal monsters roam the wastes, and approach the very gates of Dis. And, meanwhile, the forces of Admantirax and Pandemonium prepare to join hands against us, and the walls of the city are crumbling."

There was a brief silence, as though the thing on the throne expected Kratak to comment, but he kept his peace.

"I charge you, Demon Master," said the Lord, "to go out into the desert, to see what you can see. Find out what forces are arrayed against us, and what we must do to stem and turn back the rising tide. Also, I charge you to see to it that the work gangs are put to shoring up the walls, and preparing to turn the city into an impregnable fortress. You will do all this, and you will not fail."

"I will not fail," Kratak repeated formally.

It seemed almost that the creature on the throne chuckled. "Of course you won’t fail, Demon Master. You know what happens to those who fail. To your friend Rangbah, for instance."

Kratak kept absolutely still, knowing that the Lord was looking for a reaction from him. He remembered Rangbah very well. Rangbah had been called down to the maze beneath the passage one day, and had never been seen again. But the very next morning, there was a new carving on the Triumphal Arch in the middle of Dis, a carving that looked for all the world like Rangbah, his eyes wide in terror and his mouth frozen in an endless scream.

Kratak never had known what Rangbah had failed to do, and he had no great desire to find out. When the Lord dismissed him, he made his way back through the narrow and noisome corridors, more than ever on his guard. The Lords of Hell were jealous of each other, and he knew that they had spies in each other’s entourages. If one of the rival Lords in Dis discovered his mission, it would have him destroyed without hesitation.

As he rose through the darkness into the domed main chamber of the palace, Kratak wondered where to start. His mission would have to be carried out in complete secrecy, of course, so an armed reconnaissance party was out. He might take one or two assistants along at the most, but it was always good policy to trust nobody and nothing. He shook his head as he stalked past the guards into the comparatively blinding light of the outer chamber. No, there was no way he could take the risk.

There was only one thing to be done: he would go alone.

First, of course, there were the walls to be seen to. The Lord was right, Kratak knew; the work-gangs of Souls were being used far too much in ornamentation and ceremonial building, and the defences of the city were being neglected. He also knew that his orders would be resented and as far as possible sabotaged by the other demon masters. But that was something that had to be vectored into any calculation. He would simply have to work his way around it.

Passing the immense mass of the Triumphal Arch, he paused a moment to look up at it. The figure of Rangbah, screaming, was already almost lost in a forest of other sculpture, figures coiling over each other, Souls and demons and beasts without a name, some grimacing ferociously and the others writhing in torment. Suddenly, and for the first time, he wondered how many others of these sculptures were demons like Rangbah, and decided that he didn’t want to know the answer.

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