To Reign in Hell: A Novel Read Free

at him closely. “Whatever it is, you don’t like it, do you?” Yaweh shook his head. The Regent changed the subject. “I’ll want to go back to the Hold soon. It’s quite a walk.”
    “All right. But can you wait until tomorrow? It’s been a long time since you’ve slept under my roof. We’ll be having some pin-dancing. I would be pleased,” he added.
    “All right, old friend,” said the other. “I’ll stay the night. Have you brandy?”
    Yaweh nodded. They both stood at once, as if a hidden message had come to them, and embraced. “I don’t see you often enough,” said Yaweh.
    “Heaven has grown too large,” said Satan.

ONE
    Descend, then! I could also say: Ascend!
‘Twere all the same. Escape from the Created
To shapeless forms in liberated spaces!
Enjoy what long ere this was dissipated!
    —Goethe,
Faust
     
    Primordial ooze. Flux. Chaos. Cacoastrum.
    The essential of the universe, in all its myriad forms and shapes. Essence.
    Any and all combinations of form and shape exist within this essence. Eventually, of course, cacoastrum may deny itself. Order within chaos.
    How many times is order created? The question has no meaning. A tree falls in the forest, and the universe hears it. Order doesn’t last; cacoastrum will out.
    The flux creates the essence of order, which is illiaster, which was the staff of life long before bread had the privilege. It can’t last, however. Conscious? Sentient? Self-aware? Perhaps these things exist for a timeless instant, only to be lost again before they can begin to understand. They may have shape; they may have the seeds of thoughts
—
none of this matters. One of them may be a unicorn, another a greyish stone of unknown properties, still another a girl-child with big brown eyes who vanishes before she really appears. It doesn’t matter.
    But let us give to one of these forms something new. Let us give it, for the sake of argument, an instinct to survive. Ah! Now the game is different, you see.
    So this form resists, and strives to hold itself together. And as it strives, cacoastrum and illiaster produce more illiaster, and consciousness produces more consciousness, and now there are two.
    The two of them strive; and then they find that they can communicate, and time means something now. And space, as well.
    As they work together, to hold onto themselves, a third one appears. They find that they can bend the cacoastrum to their will, and force shape upon it, and command it to hold, for a while. They build walls at this place where the three of them are, and a top and a bottom.
    Cacoastrum howls, almost as a living thing itself, and seeks entry. The three resist, and then there are four, then five, then six, then seven.
    And the seven finish the walls, and the top, and the bottom and for a moment, at last, there is peace from the storm.
     
    The Southern Wall of Heaven stretched long and stark. It spanned six hundred leagues and more, fading out of sight above, where it met with the azure ceiling. Its length was unmarked; its width unmeasured; its touch cool; its look foreboding and ageless.
    The Regent had built it in the days of the Second Wave, and expanded it in the days of the Third. He had built his home into it, and out from it.
    The foundations of the Southern Hold were deep into the bedrock of Heaven, carved and scorched with the fires of Belial, made immutable by the sceptre of Yaweh. Plain and grey like the Wall, the Hold rose over grassland and stoney plain, even and unbroken until its northern wall ended abruptly and became a roof that sloped sharply up to the top. There it blended into the Wall, giving the impression that the entire affair was an accidental blister from the Wall and would soon sink back into it.
    The only entrance was built into the northern wall of the Hold. Here were placed a pair of massive oak doors, with finely carved wooden handles.
    A visitor to the Hold, no matter how often he had been there, would be moved by the stature of