Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book (26 page)

The houses had no windows. Or doors either. Demons passed right through the garishly painted walls with joyful casualness.

“Aren't we out on the plain anymore?” asked a surprised Tara, who remembered a gloomy gray expanse from which colors had been banished.

“The palace is traveling around,” answered Chem. “I focused my mind on the place where it ought to be, so I'm guessing it's in this city now. We just have to find it.”

They carefully stowed The Forbidden Book and their taludi in a slug saddlebag on Chem's back and started walking.

The black suns of this strange dimension were shining in the dark sky. Those suns had the bad habit of sparking monstrous storms, so the houses were built only to protect the demons from getting a sunburn. They never stayed inside for long. They didn't need to eat solid food, but they couldn't live without the energy from those evil suns.

There were trees too. Well, things that looked like trees. They were a vivid white to resist the burning sunlight, and bore large, dirty brown flowers, visited by enormous insects with black, green, and gray stripes.

When a demon came too close, a furious swarm of insects would attack, stinging him until he ran away screaming.

The other demons seemed to find this very funny.

As the friends passed a patch of white grass, they discovered that Limbo's plants could also eat them. Tough stalks were wrapped around the bones, insect parts, and paws littering the grass. No fool who stretched out on that lawn ever got up again.

A little farther they saw evidence that while the demons didn't need food, they still enjoyed eating, having discovered the sense of taste on other worlds. In exchange for services rendered, they were paid in food.

Living food. Which they ate raw.

“Yuck!” murmured Fabrice. “Don't they know how to use fire?”

“Yeah, but they feel it spoils the taste.”

Demon merchants stood by their stalls, hawking their merchandise. The friends noticed that exchanges between sellers and buyers were fairly muscular.

The most common exchange currency was, “Gimme that thing or I'll rip your arm off.” A popular comeback was, “Just try, and you'll get this axe in your face.” Most transactions ended badly for the weaker of the two, which explained why demon merchants were especially husky and well armed.

Among demons, it was extremely difficult to tell females from males. Tara guessed that those who were wearing ornaments, decorations, or jewels, or who had painted their skins, were the female element.

The streets were laid out in no logical pattern, and since Chem's group lacked the others' power to pass through walls, their progress was fairly complicated. But he suddenly lifted one of his heads, and his three muzzles smiled. “Follow me. I think I've found the palace.”

He was right. The Demon King's castle could be seen perched on its gigantic legs on a hill overlooking the city. The castle, too, had changed since their last visit. It was totally, definitely, absolutely . . . pink. A delicious, bizarre baby pink.

“Uh-oh!” muttered Chem. “This doesn't bode well.”

“Why not?” asked Cal. “It's kind of pretty, isn't it? Even if putting the roof on the side makes it look a little odd. And having the doors up above and the windows down below isn't super practical.”

“When the king's in a good mood, the palace is black,” said the dragon soberly, sounding very worried. “When he's in a bad mood, it's pink. And the pinker it is, the worse his mood.”

“Well, in that case let's avoid the dear old king, shall we?” said Cal. “I'm not too crazy about demons in general, so angry demons . . .”

“According to The Forbidden Book, the Limbo Judge will be in the Hall of Truth, Lies, and Betrayal.”

“That's a weird name.”

“The demons named the Judgment Hall that after their first hearings. The accused were supposed to tell the truth, but naturally they told lies, and they were betrayed by the Judge, who told the truth.”

“A regular trifecta! So, how do we avoid the guards?”

“There aren't any guards,” said the dragon. “Who would be crazy enough to threaten the Demon King in his own castle?”

“Yeah, right,” muttered Cal. “You really have to wonder.”

“By the way, how do you fight demons?” asked Robin. “Can you hurt them? Do they die?”

“They're subject to the same physical laws as humans,” said Master Chem. “They're just stronger, faster, and much better armed with claws and fangs. Beyond that, stick a sword in their body and they'll do like everyone else.”

“Oh, good. You mean they'll say ‘Arrrgh, that hurts!'” suggested Cal, who since his resurrection was being relentlessly cheerful.

Chem glared at him from one of his slug eyes. “No, they'll die. At least they will if you hit a vital organ, which isn't necessarily the heart. But we aren't planning to do any fighting, are we? We just want to record Brandis's judgment and prove Cal's innocence. So we're going to be discreet. Very, very discreet.”

The dragon was right: there weren't any guards watching at the palace windows, and they just walked in—to be greeted by a stench of rotting meat so revolting it nearly gagged them.

“Agh!” Sparrow choked. “What's that smell? It's unbearable!”

“It's coming from those things,” said Tara, who was trying to breathe only through her mouth.

Scattered on short columns along the palace hallways were chunks of meat and pitchers of blood swarming with maggots and flies.

Tara suddenly understood. “They're like room fresheners! They put them out to create an atmosphere!”

Coupled with the warm pink walls, she had an awful feeling of being in a gigantic intestine.

“Well, it's a big success,” breathed Cal, who could smell through his trunk more acutely than usual. “Let's try to find a place that stinks a little less.”

They didn't find one, of course. The palace steward clearly took this sort of thing to heart, because the same horrible stench was everywhere.

Oddly enough, they were able to walk wherever they pleased, without anyone bothering them. Tara didn't know if her magic map worked on this world, but they needed a guide to find the Judgment Hall, so she gave it a try.

“No idea!” hissed the map, mortified at having to admit ignorance. “This sector hasn't been mapped, so I don't know where this hall of yours is. You'll have to figure it out yourselves.”

Tara peered around. From the outside, the palace hadn't looked that big. But inside, it was an absurd labyrinth of corridors, halls, kitchens (what for? since demons apparently didn't cook), and rooms with strange, twisted furniture.

“We don't have any choice,” she said, putting the map away. “We'll have to ask for directions.”

“That's easy,” chuckled Cal. “Watch and learn from the master.”

Standing nearby was a little green demon looking enviously at some big ones. Which is why it was green, because demons change color according to their mood.

“We have to see the Limbo Judge,” said Cal, flexing his impressive muscles. “Where's the Judgment Hall?”

“Everybody knows where that is! Get out of my space, pollen honey!”

Hearing the demon speaking to Cal, Tara almost burst out laughing. “Pollen honey” was quite an insult! Assuming that demons hated flowers, “pollen honey” in Limbo must be the equivalent of “traduc turds” on OtherWorld.

Cal was scowling, but Chem intervened.

“Leave this to me,” said the dragon. “I think our little friend didn't quite understand the question. Maybe if we hang him by his toes he'll hear better. I happen to have just what we need to string him up.”

Chem's slimy body produced a slew of sharp, hooked, and pointed things aimed at the green demon.

Wide-eyed, the little demon began to speak so quickly, it was as if his words were stuck together.

“Take the first door on the right, the second on the left, then you turn twice, and go straight ahead.” It then cautiously added, “YourLordship.”

“Thanks” the dragon answered politely. “Very kind of you.”

Stowing all his weapons, Chem turned on his heel—or its slug equivalent—and followed the demon's directions. Which turned out to be perfectly accurate.

The only problem was that they weren't the only ones who wanted to talk to the Judge. At a glance, there must have been a thousand demons waiting before the enormous Judgment Hall. Unlike standard Limbo building practice, the Hall had a door, or rather an irregularly shaped opening like a hole in the pink wall. A creature with a head like an overcooked lobster flattened by a bulldozer announced the next litigants. They then went inside through the hole or sometimes passed directly through the wall, to lobster-head's loud complaints.

“Crap! It's going to take us a century to see the Judge,” said Cal with dismay. “And we won't be able to appeal to him in front of all these demons.”

“Who don't look especially satisfied with the sentences they're getting,” remarked Sparrow, nodding toward the demons coming out through the wall.

To the extent that they could make out the emotions on the demons' faces, muzzles, or . . . facial things, they looked more appalled than pleased. And this was true of both plaintiffs and defendants. They were all being hustled along by members of what the Demon King considered his guard. These were sickly white bipeds with a revolting clutch of tentacles on their chests, spider mandibles protruding from their mouths, and a number of arms, which held the litigants.

The sentences were pretty straightforward. In fact, there were just two basic options. One: you lost a piece of your body, which was chopped off immediately, then and there. There was no possible appeal, though the demons protested loudly. Two: you were put to death. There again the demons argued a lot, but the Judge's verdict was final.

Heads, tentacles, and various unidentified body parts were hacked off, fell to the ground, and were immediately swept away.

Those demons who only suffered amputations ran away screaming and cursing the Judge.

It was fairly creative and extremely noisy. Reacting to the ambient savagery, Sparrow had to struggle mightily not to shape-shift into the beast, which would have given away her disguise.

Suddenly the group heard a blare of trumpets, or something about as loud, and the Demon King appeared. He hadn't changed much. His disgusting round body was still scattered with countless eyes, and his thick, spotted tongue drooled as he licked them.

It was all Fabrice could do not to gag. His enthusiasm for magic had been shaken the first time he met a demon. Now, he was faced with an infernal yelping and gesticulating cohort of them. When you come right down to it, he thought, a calm, peaceful life on Earth without any magic is really super. Tara was thinking exactly the same thing, and the two earthlings exchanged looks.

The others were just as nervous, including the dragon, who worried that the king might recognize them in spite of their disguises. Sparrow's knees began to knock. The snakes on Fafnir's head started hissing so wildly she was afraid they would attract attention, so she stunned them with a punch.

The Demon King passed without so much as glancing at them—quite a stroke of luck, given how many eyes he had. Yelling and swinging their truncheons, his bodyguards cleared the Judgment Hall when the king entered. Whatever he wanted to ask the Limbo Judge, he apparently wanted to do it in private.

Within minutes, the hall and corridor were both empty.

“This is perfect!” exclaimed Chem. “He's alone now. Let's go!”

Only two bodyguards remained, standing on either side of the opening that served as a door to the Judgment Hall.

Chem didn't fool around. He used his massive bulk to flatten the two demons like pancakes.

“Inside, quick!” said one of his heads while the other two kept watch.

Tara and her friends rushed in.

Once in the hall, they realized with horror that the demons who'd merely been amputated or executed had actually gotten off easy. Because the Limbo Judge could pronounce a third sentence.

Imprisonment.

For eternity.

A spell had been cast on the walls of the Judgment Hall, which displayed every convicted demon that had been imprisoned in the stone. The oldest ones, the ones who had been there the longest, no longer moved—they were statues forever. But the demons who had only recently been sentenced were still struggling, straining to free themselves. Imprisoned in the stone, they silently screamed with rage and fear.

The sight was so shocking that the friends instinctively drew together and kept their distance from the walls.

The Demon King was sitting on a throne directly across from an enormous statue of . . . nothing. Just a big, shapeless black mass, with a roughly carved eye, ear, and mouth.

The mouth was speaking and had the attention of the king, who didn't hear them enter the hall.

“He was lying,” it said, in a resounding, brazen voice. “He knows where they are. You're no longer powerful enough to get the truth out of him. By giving him some of your power, you've created a real competitor for your race. Much more than the dragon standing right behind you, for that matter!”

Caught by surprise, Master Chem gasped at the same time as the king.

“What the—?” began the demon.

He didn't have time to finish his sentence. Rushing at the king like a runaway train, Chem used his enormous bulk to smother him. Tara didn't know if demons had lungs—though Limbo air was breathable—but when Chem slid off the king, he was out cold.

“Cursed judge!” snarled the old wizard. “This fake body of mine didn't fool him. Well, now that our cover is blown, I'm going to retransform you, so I can get all my magic power back.”

“Ouch, that hurts!” complained Cal as he reverted to his normal body and his robe to its normal shape. “So, what do we do now?”