The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 179: A and Q

Chapter 179: A and Q

"Her? Who is her?"

The demon's reply was virtually inaudible, helped along by the acoustics in the strange hall, "A little one of my own."

Mab seized the edge of her throne. "Your...own?"

He nodded, sagging at last, his eyes clouding over.

Mab was astounded. She forced herself to let go of the throne, and started to pace. "You? Thorn Tongue? A baby?"

"A baby."

"But it was never like you, to allow your seed to fall into the belly of anyone!"

Crowley rolled his tongue in his mouth. He sighed, heavily. And suddenly, he found, he could not look at her. He bowed his head.

As she watched him, her face become a mask of horror. "Demon, why are you suddenly silenced?"

He was shaking. He just shook his head, shook all over, unable to answer her. And still the incense rolled in, filling him up, merging now with other memories, red and raw, bright. Loud.

Mab's cheeks colored against the late autumn leaves. "My star maker.... was this coerced from you?"

But now, at last, was too much. He SAW it all. He was there. He could not move.

It was then the queen noticed how suddenly stuffy the hall was becoming. The people of her court coughed and sputtered. Right along with, she noticed with scrutiny, her burners.

"You there!" she shouted, pointing to a stack of straw and debris shuffling on its own among the golden censers. At her command, it halted.

It wasn't a bale of hay. It was a knoll.

It was a type of hunched troll that covered itself in clumps of bramble and foliage. They mostly cleaned things, and collected, and it all went in there somewhere in the heap, and no one had the stomach to look underneath. Knolls often served in the court this way, and this one spread incense throughout the court. Mab thought she knew all her knolls, but one pretty much looked, and smelled, like another. This one was familiar enough, and they could be rather dense things. It didn't seem dubious. Still.

She regarded the demon worriedly, and sniffed the air. "Knoll, that incense had gone rancid. Put it out at once!" The knoll slowly shuffled in the other direction, and lifted a skeletal hand from its stack, toting in its lanky blackened fingers a snuffer. Methodically, it trudged back and undid all its work, and the incense sizzled to nothing.

"And when you're done, leave us!" Mab looked about the room. "In fact, everyone, go! I require a private audience with this demon."

The great room emptied, a procession of all things strange, muttering to themselves about what they had witnessed, and what it might mean. All this left was the knoll finishing its task, and the queen, and a demon lost to pain.

Crowley's medallion started to glow, and Mab saw it.

For the angel the motorway was almost too much for him to expect. A pandemonium of movement and light and sound, garish colors and acidic biting fumes. Might as well be a rock concert: he couldn't discern the difference. He was so overwhelmed.

Thousands of years had offered him many opportunities to see races, chariots in particular. But he wasn't big on horses, and all the shouting, and well, throw in several dozen motors and it rather gets out of hand.