But Qeteb surprised them. He had retained the congenial, handsome facade he'd shown DragonStar, and now walked about their glade, tossing an apple from one hand to the other.
Qeteb was in an extremely good mood. Infinite power coupled with infinite destruction lay in his immediate future, and that made him a trifle mellower than usual. He took a bite out of the apple.
"DragonStar would have guessed the fate of the Sacred Groves soon enough," he said around the bits of creamy apple flesh that fell from his mouth. "And knowing precisely what rides on the individual combats will make him insecure, not more powerful. Sometimes knowledge undermines, not empowers."
His eyes slid to Niah, still lying waiting soullessly for whatever his pleasure might be next.
Qeteb's lips curled in a sly smile, and he spat out the remaining fragments of the apple, tossing the core away to a rabid weasel nosing amid a dungheap behind one of the fruit trees.
Qeteb's face flickered in distaste as the weasel snatched at the core. He thought that once he got the new order working nicely within this wasteland, he might do something about the more pungent aspects of his horde of maniacal admirers.
Then he bent down to Niah, and stroked her hair. Bitch. Her form did not appeal at all, but it was female and it was fertile, and that is all that Qeteb cared about. His hand slid down to her belly, and pressed down.
Her body nourished the foetal flesh that would eventually harbour Rox's soul. A shame that the new flesh took so long to grow. There were magics and enchantments that could be used to speed up the process, but even so it would be many weeks before Niah's body had fulfilled its purpose and Qeteb could dispose of it once and for all.
"Good little wife," he muttered, and patted her cheek. "Dear girl."
Weeks it might take, but in the meantime Niah was going to come in very, very useful.
Barzula appeared at his shoulder, and Qeteb looked up.
"What are you going to do?" Barzula asked. His voice was laden with suppressed excitement. His three companions and he had thought that Qeteb would act instantly to use Niah's latent powers, and now they grew impatient.
Best not to show it too much, though.
Qeteb stood up and straightened out the fine grey wool tunic he wore.
"We go to the Sacred Groves, and we eat,'" he said, and the other four Demons broke into howls of anticipation, holding hands and capering about in a circle.
"We need the power that we will obtain there," Qeteb continued, and then paused, his eyes fixing on some distant, unseen point as he thought of all the power he and his could feed on in the Sacred Groves.
The silence lengthened.
Qeteb visibly shook himself, then spoke again. "We need that extra power to —"
"Destroy Sanctuary?" Sheol said, letting her eagerness get the better of her sense.
Qeteb roared, and flung out a stiff arm, hitting Sheol in the cheekbone.
There was a distinct crack, and Sheol fell over, but she scrambled to her feet, letting neither Qeteb's anger nor her swelling face distract her from her hunger.
"What then?" she whispered. Her cheek quivered, and then rearranged itself back into a normal shape.
Qeteb stared at her, then spoke. "We restore Rox's soul to the scrap of flesh within that woman's belly —"
"But that won't do any good!" Mot said. He stepped forward, his skeletal arms wrapped about himself as if his overabundant hunger would make him consume himself at any moment. "He can't be born yet, and —"
"Will no-one allow me to finish?" Qeteb bellowed, and the other Demons subsided, dropping their eyes and shuffling their feet.
It was a show of respect only. They were far too excited at the thought of the power that lay ahead to be too submissive.
"Have you learned nothing from all the worlds we have consumed? All the souls we have absorbed? Ah!"
Qeteb stalked away a few paces, then strode back, bent down and seized Niah by the hair, and hauled her to her feet.
Her face registered no pain, no offence.
Qeteb shook her so violently her arms and legs jiggled. "She is soulless. There is nothing there! If Rox inhabits the flesh within her flesh, then he can control her from her womb. He can control her power\"
"Why not simply give Rox her body to inhabit?" Sheol asked. Why bother with all this waiting for the foetus Qeteb had planted to reach a viable state?
Qeteb stared at Sheol, allowing rage to suffuse his face. Initially, he'd wanted to give Rox a new body of flesh to inhabit — Niah's flesh had been somewhat overused, after all. But now there was a very, very good reason he didn't want Rox to have permanent control of this woman's body: if she was so infused with the Enemy's power, then Qeteb wanted none of the other Demons to control it for very long. That Rox would do so for some few short weeks or months did not trouble Qeteb — after all, he was sure he could keep Rox under control for that length of time. But Qeteb would not, could not, tolerate a permanent situation where Rox controlled the vast power of the Enemy.
It might put Qeteb himself under threat.
No, better to dispose of the Niah person once and for all the instant her purpose was served.
There was one further reason why Qeteb did not give Niah's soulless body to Rox, a reason that he did not even want to voice in his mind, let alone aloud to the other Demons: there was something inside the Niah-woman that stopped him doing it.
Qeteb could not understand it. There was no logical reason why he shouldn't have been able to suffuse the Niah-woman's body with Rox's soul, but he could not do it. All his exploratory probings had been repulsed. By what? By what?
He growled, and flexed his fists, and the four watching Demons took a simultaneous, co-ordinated step backwards.
"Her body is foul and corrupted," he said, "and I wish Rox to have flesh of this flesh," he slapped his thigh, "to use. I am honouring him thus."
The other four stared at him, then decided to accept his words.
"Once Rox is installed in the foetus and has control of the woman's body," Qeteb continued in a pleasant voice, as if none of the previous unpleasantness had occurred at all, "then we will destroy Sanctuary. We will consume everything within it —"
