Page 87 of The Simurgh

‘I can take another of the Dominion for these trials, Luci.’ The Seraph had been in a rare languid mood as they stood together watching the quartz rise over the Shangri-la basin, Seraphiel’s home outside of White Mountain.

‘Vassago is the strongest of them, that is why you want him,’ Lucifer had replied. ‘But he is wild. I hear talk that Lord Enoch is considering disengaging him should he become any more unpredictable. The legion is unhappy, to say the least, with Vassago’s reckless command.’

‘I have heard the same.’ Seraphiel had stretched his glorious wings, brushing at the coarse crags of Lucifer’s face. ‘And his precarious position is precisely why he appeals. His dangerous unpredictability makes him expendable. With these trials I intend to see if the Dominions’ power can be enhanced, but if it should fail with Vassago…well, there are few who would mind seeing him put down.’

They’d lapsed into a companionable silence for a while, Lucifer resting his head upon the angel’s considerable shoulders. Here, nothing more was expected of Lucifer than to be near by.

The Seraphim was rare company in that he accepted the King of Daemonkind’s abhorrence of intimacy. Lucifer hungered for company, but not the kind that involved being naked, and on his back or on his knees. How Vassago had inherited such rich incubus blood in his veins astounded the King, for it was dried up to nothing in his own.

That day he had sighed, and brushed his rough fingers against the ethereal glow of Seraphiel’s wing. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’

‘With the daemon?’

‘With your passions,’ Lucifer had said. ‘I fear they will take you to a place you cannot return from.’

Lucifer was stirred from his thoughts by a subtle clearing of a throat. His guards were already mounted on their chariots, which at least aided Lucifer in knowing which of the three he was supposed to take. They were discreet with the looks they gave him, but he knew he’d waited far to long to order them on. Gabriel was already at a distance.

‘Well, go on then,’ he barked. ‘Do not leave His Grace unattended. Flank him, I shall draw up behind.’

They snapped their reins, following orders at once. The chariots were basic in appearance, high front, sloping sides, constructed in a material with a mother of pearl hue, the two large wheels carved from clear crystal. The reins were as thin as spiderweb and did not go to the creatures’ mouths but were instead attached where the unicorns had two more horns, short stumps, growing at their shoulders.

Gabriel set a cracking pace along the yellow-stone road that stretched off into the distance. The landscape was filled with all the absurdities of the Faelands, land that drew inspiration from the human world and contorted it where it pleased. That was why streams here did not flow down over the rocky outcrops of peach crystal but upwards, and creatures that resembled butterflies but had the tails of birds of paradise, impossible lengths that ought to be too much for such tiny specimens. At least the weather was mild, the sunless sky something near to the twilight colours of an English summer.

Very similar colours to those of the simurgh.

Lucifer set his stance wide for better balance, the singular unicorn that pulled his chariot doing well to catch Gabriel’s faster progress. He could not yet gather himself from the shock of seeing the Cultivation. And not entirely because it was made, partly, from the Primordial Flame, terrible and dangerous enough, certainly. But that was not what had made the ludicrous heart in his chest lose its rhythm.

Seraphiel had made his weapon in the likeness of a simurgh.

Lucifer’s simurgh.

When their infrequent encounters in the halls of White Mountain became more commonplace, more lingering, and they found themselves speaking well past the dipping of the Morningstar and into the following day, Lucifer had revealed to the angel his rather embarrassing passion for reading the tomes of the purebreds, their colourful mythologies, especially. The lavish, fantastical tales amused him at first, and then intrigued, and then fascinated, as he studied an entire world who sought desperately to try and make sense of itself. He did not approve of seeing his name given to a creature of evil, but regardless he was quite addicted to the powerless little world’s stories.

Seraphiel had found the simurgh in the pages of one of Lucifer’s favourite Persian texts. He had Cultivated its likeness and brought it to Lucifer’s chambers very late one warm Boreas evening. A creature of illusion of course, a spectacle of divine magick. But an utter delight. Seraphiel clearly found it amusing that the mighty King of Daemonkind was so enamoured by what the angel declared a simpleton’s phoenix.

‘Now there was a fine ferocious beast,’ Seraphiel had declared of the long-extinct primordial, one of the many that the purebred’s declared mythological, but had in fact roamed Arcadia in the very distant past. The phoenix had been a rabid giant, in great contrast to the benevolence of the truly mythological simurgh in the human tales.

But Lucifer did not need any more violence in his life. He was a warlord, a ruler of soldiers, and a king in a land at constant war. The quiet, calm beauty of the simurgh appealed to him. He’d treasured the creature for hundreds of years, a constant companion in his chambers. On the odd occasion, he would read the purebred texts aloud to the creature, who sat upon its perch like sunset given wings, watching him with its gemstone eyes.

Seraphiel’s quest to destroy the halo had seen him grow obsessed with inflating his own strength. With making it even more formidable than it already was. And as part of this he claimed back all the gifts he’d given. As though returning these ounces of magick might make all the difference in the end. The angel had come for the simurgh, only a few months before he died, and an ugly fight had ensued. Lucifer had even stooped to begging, but there was no reasoning with the angel by then.

The unicorn that bore Lucifer’s chariot slowed its pace.

Rising up out of a meadow of colourful flowers with tops like whirly gigs, was the Crystal Palace. Lucifer rolled his eyes at the sight. The structure was an enormous iron-framed and glass hall, multiple stories high, with a dominant arch at the centre flanked by lower mirroring arches at either end. Hardly an original, this was another design stolen straight from the human world, an exhibition hall in South London, one he’d passed by whilst he’d tried to walk off his consternation after delivering Vassago to the Lady Satine .

Did the Erlking not have an original thought of his own? Little wonder he’d been willing to accommodate the purebred sorcerers in his cockaigne. His fetish for the human world was starkly obvious.

Lucifer drew up the unicorn, a swift animal, though not so swift perhaps as Satine’s horses. He scowled at thought of the Lady. He was not proud of deceiving her in all this. The djinn had been tolerable company for many a year. But he’d never have convinced such a stubborn creature of the need to include the prince amongst those who would fall here today. And she was not Arcadian, nor quite ancient enough, to understand what peril it was to have even a scintilla of the Primordial Flame loose in the world. This foolish attempt of theirs must come to an end.

But she’d not see it that way. Satine was almost as obsessed with seeing an end to Blood Lake as Seraphiel had been. She was, after all, the one practically chained to its shores. A mammoth watchdog who faced eternity in her role as gatekeeper.

‘Where is the Erlking?’ Gabriel was already striding through the enormous glass doors that parted to receive him. Two guards slanted their staffs across their fronts, touching them to their armour with resounding clacks. Lucifer hurried to catch up, walking as quickly as decorum allowed. It wouldn’t do for the captain to be seen out of place.

‘His Majesty is not here, your grace.’ The guard’s polished armour worked like a mirror, catching the reflections of all those around him, the silver intermingled with a hint of a pearlescent gleam, like that of a clamshell. His helmet was a suitably lavish affair, with a thick ruby-red brocade overlaying the silver. Matching droplets of red hung from his strikingly elongated ears.

What little Lucifer cared to know of the elves was that their vanity could rival the Higher Angels. He’d visited the Seelie Court only once, but their affinity for closeness and touch was repulsive, their simmering sexuality grossly unsettling.

‘That is not what I asked you.’ Gabriel’s capricious nature was well known, and feared, in Arcadia. Lucifer had once seen him berate a hydra so badly that the creature shed two of its head through shock alone. ‘Where is the Erlking?’