The crust of the Blasted Land is coal black, porous, and brittle, with burrs that look sharp enough to slice through tender human flesh, but crumble like volcanic ash beneath Asmador’s feet. Jets of steam vent upward from bottomless cracks in the broken ground; the air smells foul and scorched, as though someone, somewhere, were burning a gigantic omelet made with rotten eggs.
Above the jagged horizon, the sky is a smoky, bloodshot gray. The light is diffuse, directionless. Slumped beneath the weight of the dead human he carries on his shoulders, Asmador trudges listlessly through a landscape devoid of shadow, toward the crumbling ruins of an ancient amphitheater. He passes beneath an arched entryway, its portcullis raised, and strides down a dank, dirt-floored tunnel that dips beneath the coliseum walls, then rises gradually, opening out onto a bullring circled by tier upon tier of stone benches.
There are no spectators at this meeting of the Concilium Infernalis-just Asmador and the Council members themselves, who have convened at the far end of the arena floor, twisting and squirming in high-backed, thronelike chairs framed from human bones and upholstered in leather tanned from human skins.
Because many of them are shape-shifters, lacking in repose, and others sport multiple heads (Asmodeus the Dandy, for instance, has three, a bull, a ram, and a human male, all symbolic of lechery, while Azazel the Armorer wears seven serpent heads, each of which has two faces), it’s difficult for Asmador to be sure how many of them are present as he shuffles forward to lay his burden, the bloodied, partially consumed corpse of an old man, at their feet. “Three down, three to go,” he announces.
Sammael the Red, also known as the Poison Angel (in Hebrew, sam means poison, el means angel), steps forward in his human guise: youthful, handsome, and redheaded, with a sneer that always makes Asmador want to check to make sure his fly is closed. “Three down, my feathered ass! The first two hardly suffered, and this one died of a heart attack.”
This seems a little unfair to Asmador-but perhaps fairness isn’t a quality one should expect of a high-ranking demon. “I’ll do better next time, I promise. Just tell me which of them it should be.”
“The answer is in the Book,” hisses Sammael, disconcertingly transmogrifying into his other aspect-half-human, half-vulture. Even more disconcertingly, the Blasted Land begins to shimmer and fade like a soap bubble around him. “The answer is always in the Book,” he adds, his form so faint Asmador can see right through him. He laughs, and then he’s gone, and the others with him. But his laughter lingers. That’s one of the Poison Angel’s more annoying traits, Asmador remembers: that mocking, disembodied laughter.