Free To Reign in Hell: A Novel by Steven Brust

sure.”
    Asmodai slammed his palm against the arm of the chair. Then he poured himself a glass full of wine and tossed it down.
    “Lord Satan?” said Lilith.
    “Yes.”
    “It isn’t by our desires that we are doing this—forcing you to decide.”
    “I know.”
    “We are being forced as much as we are forcing you. By the Plan, yes—but more: by the flux itself.”
    Satan turned to Beelzebub. “Sound familiar?” he asked wryly.
    Beelzebub nodded without speaking,
    “All of this is beside the point,” said Asmodai, his lips tight with anger. “You must decide
now.
You must—”
    “Why all the heat, Asmodai?”
    “Because—” he stopped, looked away, and shrugged.
    “Methinks,” said Beelzebub, “that Asmodai doth fear his own doubts, and would have thee as target that he need not have himself.”
    “I see,” said Satan.
    “Whatever Asmodai’s reason,” said Michael, “he is right.”
    Satan shrugged. “Telling me ‘decide’ doesn’t help me do it. Which way? Why? What are the effects? Can you answer these questions? Can you answer them for yourselves, if not for me?”
    No one spoke.
    “I thought not. Then here is my decision: I will leave tomorrow, and travel to the center, and speak with Yaweh. If he can’t give me the answers I want I’ll . . . do whatever I do. Does that satisfy you?”
    Michael nodded thoughtfully. Lilith said, “Yes.” Lucifer nodded once, abruptly. Asmodai remained silent and unmoving.
    “Perhaps,” Lucifer told Asmodai, “you should go along and get your answers at the same time.”
    “No,” he said. “I’ll get my own answers, in my own way, or live without them.”
    “An thou canst live without them, thou art better than I.”
     
    “Good day to you, Kyriel.”
    “And to you, Sith.”
    “I’ve been hearing things.”
    “It’s as I told you, isn’t it?”
    “Worse, if anything. They don’t care about us, it seems. They need angels to work on the walls, and whatever happens to them doesn’t matter.”
    “It isn’t the walls.”
    “It isn’t?”
    “What I’ve heard is that. . . .”
    “Why did you shudder, Kyriel?”
    “I’ve heard that . . . that we’re to go out there and—build something. I don’t know what.”
    “Go out there?”
    “You know,
outside,
“
    “Oh.”
    “Now
you’re
shuddering, Kyriel.”
    “I know. It’s hard to believe. I’ve heard the stories.”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you remember your creation, Kyriel?”
    “Somewhat.”
    “I also, somewhat. Would you go back to that?”
    “Not if I didn’t have to!”
    “Is there nothing we can do, Kyriel?”
    “Well, I suppose we could do nothing.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well . . . look, Sith: We’re going to hear about this before it happens, aren’t we?”
    “Well, yes. I suppose.”
    “They have to gather us together, somehow or other, to go marching out into it.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well . . . what if we’re not there?”
    “Huh? Where would we be?”
    “Somewhere else.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Hide! We go off somewhere—to the north maybe—”
    “Where Belial is?”
    “Not that far north. Just somewhere that we can hide.”
    “Then what?”
    “We wait until it’s over, then come back. They’ll never miss us, two out of the thousands.”
    “Three.”
    “Three?”
    “Bath Kol.”
    “Oh! So it’s true about—”
    “Shut up, Kyriel.”
    “Right. Three.”
     
    Yaweh walked alone in the throne room. He walked around the perimeter, or back and forth across the middle. Sometimes he walked slowly, lost in reflection; other times he moved quickly, as if he actually had somewhere to go. He wondered whether Satan would return with the page. He thought so, but then he thought not.
    Yaweh remembered the beginning—how the two of them had perceived each other, almost before each had perceived himself. During the first battle, they fought on and on, side by side, striving for their lives without understanding that that was what they were