Agrippa, many centuries old, had the leathery skin and deep wrinkles of a rottweiler.
The attendant verified his invitation and let them continue inside.
Within the banqueting hall they came to a table so long that it disappeared from sight at either end. Luckily, Agrippa and Moondrench’s seats were near the middle. They found little name tags in the form of paper pennants stuck into grapefruits.
Taking their places, they nodded to their neighbors on either side. The speeches from the high table had already begun. Agrippa found himself sitting next to a Nubian angel with an ebony halo. Moondrench looked around, still considerably in awe, and saw food being passed.
“Can I eat now?” he asked Agrippa in a loud whisper.
“Yes, but don’t make a pig of yourself.”
Moondrench snarled at him and speared a turkeydogleg from a platter as it went by. He followed it up with a glass of mescal ichor. This had the embryonic dragon at the bottom of the glass, identifying it as genuine. He munched and looked around. He stared at the tall blond creature with big blue eyes who sat across the table from him. “Hot damn,” he remarked to Agrippa. “That’s what I call some kind of sexy.”
“Forget it,” Agrippa said. “That’s an angel and he’s not for the likes of you.”
It was a fact that demons were always lusting after angels, who, it is said, were flattered by the attention. This occasion of the Awards Dinner was one of the few times they were able to mingle freely with each other.
Waiters hurried back and forth with trays of food and drink. Many of them wore the ethnic masks which were so popular in celestial circles. Their masks matched the type of food they were serving. Italian angels served tiny pizzas, Vietnamese angels had eggrolls and Pho soup, and Arab spirits bore silver trays with kebabs piled high on them.
The food was good, of course, but Moondrench was more interested in strong drink. “Pass the ichor,” he told a tall skinny spirit diagonally across the table from him. Agrippa was getting a good start, too. Moondrench considered joining a group of devils off by themselves in a corner, where they drank ichor out of each other’s shoes and giggled immoderately. At a different part of the table, a fat demon in a clown’s outfit cut into a large pie, releasing four-and-twenty blackbirds, which fluttered around the heads of the guests.
“Having a good time?” Agrippa asked Moondrench.
“It isn’t bad,” Moondrench said. “But who is that over there waving his hands?”
“That’s Asmodeus,” Agrippa said. “He’s in charge of this section of the banquet.”
“And the dark lady beside him?”
“That is Hecate, Queen of Night. If they look in your direction, just smile and raise your glass. They are very important.”
“You don’t have to tell me how to behave. What is Asmodeus doing? He seems to be reading something. But I didn’t know that Lord Demons could read.”
“Very funny,” Agrippa said. “If he hears you saying things like that, you’ll see how humorous he’ll feel.” Agrippa peered more closely. “He seems to be studying the notes for his speech.”
“What speech?” Moondrench asked. “You didn’t say anything about the speeches.”
“I thought you understood what this is all about.”
“Just some sort of big party, isn’t it?”
“Rather more than that,” Agrippa said. “This is the occasion when they announce the winner of the Millennial contest which determines the quality that will dominate men’s lives for the next thousand years.”
Moondrench said, “Is it so important, this matter of human destiny? ”
“Not to us, perhaps,” Agrippa said. “But to them it means quite a lot.”
A Nameless Horror stalked by, reeking of deep reptilian musk. Its companion, a model of the Pickman variety, asked, “Did you hear what happened to Good’s entry?”
The Nameless Horror grunted in the negative.
“The whole damned thing fell down! Made a beautiful crash -with those stained-glass windows and all. Too bad about the gargoyles, of course.”
“How come?” the Nameless Horror growled.
“Something to do with buttressing and flying-I’m not clear on the mechanics. Guess Good wasn’t either. Har! Har!”