Johannes Cabal The Necromancer Read Free

interrupting his work for every Tom, Dick, and Johannes”— he paused for effect, but the human just looked at him with a faint air of what seemed to be pity—“Harry, that is, who turns up demanding audience.”

    “Really?” said Cabal. “I had no idea. I thought this would be an uncommon occurrence, unique even, but you seem to imply that it happens all the time. Fair enough.”

    Ratuth was just thinking how well he’d handled things when, suddenly, Cabal pointed directly at him. “I call you liar!” he spat. “I call you duplicitous, mendacious, and thoroughly amateur at both enterprises.”

    “What?” shrieked the demon general. “WHAT? You, a mere mortal, dare to call me thus?” The eldritch angles unfolded, the darkness about him deepened as he rose like some dreadful bird of prey. “I shall destroy you! I shall rend the very flesh from your skeleton, hollow your long bones, and play your funeral lament upon them! For I am Ratuth Slabuth! Dark General of the Infernal Hordes! Father of Desolation! Despoiler of Innocence! Look upon me, mortal, and know thy doom!”

    Cabal, he noticed through his rage, looked calm. Worryingly so.

    “ ‘Ratuth Slabuth,’ eh?” said Cabal. “You wouldn’t happen to have started your career as Ragtag Slyboots, Despoiler of Milk and Entangler of Shoelaces, would you?”

    The effect was electric. Ratuth Slabuth folded up like an especially large deck of cards in the blink of an eye until he was the same height as Cabal.

    “How did you know that?” he asked quickly.

    “I’m a necromancer. You’d be surprised at the sources we dig up. Now, then, do I get my audience with Satan or do I spread rumours about a certain diabolic general’s personal history? Which is it to be?”

    Johannes Cabal. Johannes Cabal. I’m sure I know that name.”

    Lord Satan was actually pleased to have something to distract him from the dull day-to-day administration of the Eternally Damned in all their massed homogeneity. He’d simply waved an embarrassed and apologetic Ratuth Slabuth behind his throne and settled down to be amused.

    The throne was only a throne by dint of its vast scale; otherwise, it was simply a big stone chair on the end of a rocky peninsula that extended into the centre of a lake of boiling lava. All in all, it was less of an audience and more of a fireside chat.

    Satan sat comfortably on the unyielding basalt throne, massive and urbane. All things to all people, he looked exactly as you’d imagine. Exactly. He snapped his fingers.

    “Oh, of course. The necromancer. Now I recall. You have a contract with me, I think. Yes?” He gestured, and a demonic secretary appeared in his colossal hand. “Nip over to Contracts and pull whatever we’ve got on Johannes Cabal, please.” The demon made a note on a yellow pad before soaring into the sulphurous air and out of sight.

    “Yes,” replied Cabal. “You have my soul. I’d like it back.”

    Ratuth Slabuth choked down a laugh. Cabal gave him a milk-curdling look and continued.

    “I traded my soul over to you some years ago. That was a mistake— its absence is proving an intolerable burden. Therefore, I should like it back.”

    Ratuth Slabuth was making idiotic muffled guffawing noises. Satan quelled him with a glance before addressing Cabal.

    “Now, you see, Johannes, we have a little bit of a problem there.” The secretary landed on Satan’s casually opened hand and passed him a roll of parchment before ceasing to exist. Satan unrolled it between his fingers and read it as he spoke. “You see, as a rule of thumb, I don’t give souls back. It might set a precedent. These things do. This”—he indicated the parchment with the wave of a finger tipped with a nail the size of a very well-manicured tombstone—“is a perfectly standard contract with the exception of a proviso about you giving up your soul immediately rather than my having to wait until you’re dead or after a set period, the Faust