In it, aside from the pile of golden coins and gems and miscellaneous body parts, was the hilt of a sword, its blade broken off, and tied around it, a red silk lady’s favor. There was also a pair of human legs, in very good condition, scarcely gnawed at all. And a fair amount of lesser stuff, knucklebones, septums, a set of kneecaps, which he turned in for gold.
Azzie, being a true demon, would have gone on gambling as long as he had a penny or a body part to his name. But the sun had just peeped cautiously above the eastern horizon and it was time for everyone to leave the graveyard. Azzie stuffed his winnings into a stout canvas bag which he had been carrying around for just such a purpose. The beginnings of an idea were starting to form in his mind. It was still vague, but there was something there.
Chapter 1
After leaving the poker game, Azzie flew north. He had decided to look in on the great convention of demons being held at Aachen, Charlemagne’s old capital, as part of the opening ceremonies for the Millennial contest. But strong head winds held him up, since being invisible and slightly tenuous does not reduce all air pressure and drag. By evening, he had gotten no farther than Ravenna. He decided to pass up the convention and found a nice graveyard to rest in outside the city walls.
It was a pleasant place, with plenty of big old trees, oaks and willows, a pretty combination, and, of course, cypress, the stately death tree of the Mediterranean. There were nicely decaying tombs and mausoleums. In the distance, he could see the sagging graystone outline of the city wall.
He made himself comfortable near a weathered headstone. What he needed now was a cozy fire. He raided a nearby mausoleum and found several exceedingly dry cadavers. These, together with some dead cats, who had been poisoned by some busybody from the town, fed the flames.
As night wore on, Azzie found that he was getting hungry. He’d had a fine feed last night at the poker game, and demons can go a long time between meals, but flying into head winds all day had given him an appetite. He emptied his sack to see what provisions he had left.
Ah, there were a couple of candied jackal’s heads he had taken from the party, wrapped in a bit of moldy winding-sheet. They were delicious morsels, but they left him unfilled. He looked to see what else was in the sack and discovered the pair of legs he’d won.
They looked delicious but he didn’t really want to eat them. He remembered some stirring of an idea when he’d first seen them, though now it was forgotten. He was sure there was something he could do with them other than eat them, so he propped them against a tombstone. They brought on an almost irresistible desire to soliloquize. Demons at this time thought nothing of traveling hundreds of miles to find a really good object to soliloquize over. It was an especially pleasant exercise on a desolate Italian upland “with a thrusting wind and the distant bark of jackals.
“O legs,” Azzie said, “I warrant you trooped nicely to your lady’s favor, and bowed well, too, since you are a pair of muscular and nimble legs, of the sort the ladies look upon with favor. O legs, I imagine you now, widespread in antic mirth, and then coiled tight together in that final paroxysm of love. When you were young, O legs, you climbed many a stately oak, and ran near running streams, and across the green friendly fields of your homeland. I daresay you dove over thicket and hedge as you careened your way. No path was too long for you, and you were never tired.”
“Think you so?” a voice said from above and behind him. Azzie turned and beheld the mournful cloaked figure of Hermes Trismegistus. He was not surprised that the mage had followed him here. Hermes and the other old gods seemed to follow a different destiny from demons or ghosts, a destiny unaffected by questions of good and evil.