The Dead of Winter Part 19

"Some G.o.ds," Siveni said, "have gone and not come back." She looked at Mriga in warning, silently reminding her of the daughter of Dene Blackrobe, merry Sostreia: once maiden G.o.ddess of the spring, and now the queen and bride of h.e.l.l, awful and nameless.

"Yes," Ischade said, "there is always some uncertainty about the travels of G.o.ds in those regions." Yet her eyes were inward-turned, musing; and a tick of time later, when they focused on Mriga again, the G.o.ddess knew she had won. There was interest there, and the hope that something would happen to relieve the terrible tedium that a.s.sails the powerful. The interest hid behind Ischade's languid pose the way Stilcho's old handsomeness haunted his scars.

"A pretty problem," she said, musing out loud now. "Mortal souls I could simply send there-a knife would be sorcery enough for that-and then recall. Though the bodies would still be dead. But that won't work for you two; your structure's the problem. G.o.ds' souls enclose and include the body, instead of the other way around. Killing the bodies won't work. Killing a soul ... is a contradiction in terms: impossible." She sighed a little. "A pity, sometimes; this place has been getting crowded of late."

Then firelight stirred and glittered in Ischade's eyes as for a moment they became wider. "Yet I might reduce that crowding, at least temporarily ..."

Siveni's eyes glittered too. "You're going to use the ghosts," she said. "You're going to borrow their mortality."

"Why, you're a quick pupil indeed," Ischade said, all velvet mockery. "Not their mortality exactly. But their fatality ... their deadness. One need not die to go to h.e.l.l. One need only have died. I can think of ways to borrow that. And then h.e.l.l will have two more inmates for the night."

"Three," said Mriga.

"Four," said Siveni.

They looked at each other, then at Ischade.

Ischade raised her eyebrows. "What, the dog too?"

Tyr yipped.

"And who else, then?"

"Madam," Siveni said, "the best way to be sure we come back from this venture is to have with us the guide who opens the way. Especially if the way back is as difficult as you claim."

Ischade held quite still for a moment, then began to laugh, and laughed long and loud. A terrible sound it was. "These are hard times," she said, "when even G.o.ds are so suspicious."

"Treachery is everywhere," said Mriga, wondering swiftly how the thought had escaped her before.

"Oh indeed," Ischade said, and laughed again, softly, until she lost her breath.

"Very well. But what coin do you plan to use to pay the ones below? Even I only borrow souls, then send them back; and believe me, there's a price. To get your barber back in the flesh and living, the payment to those below will have to be considerable. And there's the problem of where you'll put him-"

"That will be handled," Mriga said, "by the time the deed's done. Meanwhile we shouldn't waste time, madam. Even in h.e.l.l time flows, and souls forget how to stay in bodies."

Ischade looked lazily at Mriga, and once again there was interest behind the look, and calculation. "You haven't yet told me what you'll do with your barber once you've got him," she said. "Besides the predictable divine swiving."

"You haven't yet told us what payment you'll require," said Mriga. "But I'll say this. Last time you met my lord, you told him that if he brought Siveni back among the living, you'd find the proceedings merry to watch. And did you not?"

Ischade smiled, small and secret. "I watched them take away the temple doors that she smashed down into the street," she said softly, "and I saw the look on Molin Torchholder's face while they carted them off. He was most distressed at the sudden activity of Ilsig G.o.ds. So he began to pull what strings he could to deal with that problem ... and one of the strings he pulled was attached to Tempus and his Stepsons, and the Third Commando."

"And to you," Mriga said. "So that the barracks burned, and then the city burned, and Harran and a thousand others died. All so that the town will keep on being too divided against itself to care that you go about in it, manipulating the living and doing your pleasure on the dead ... to alleviate your boredom."

"The G.o.ds are wise," Ischade said, quietly.

"Sometimes not very. But I don't care. My business is to see what I love brought somewhere safe. After that- this town needs its own G.o.ds. Not Rankan, or Beysib, or even Ilsigi. I'm one of the new ones. There are others, as you know. Once the 'divine swiving' is out of the way. I intend to see those new young G.o.ds settled, for this place's good, and its people's good. That may take mortal years, but while it's going on, there'll be 'merry times' enough for even you without you having to engineer them. There'll be war in heaven ... which is always mirrored on earth."

"Or the other way around," Ischade said.

"Either way, you'll find it very interesting. Which is what you desire. Isn't it?"

Ischade looked at Mriga. "Very well. This business is apparently in my interests. We'll discuss payment after-ward; it will be high. And I shall go with you ... to watch the 'merry times' begin." She smiled. Mriga smiled too.

Ischade's velvet, matter-of-fact malice was wide awake, hoping disaster would strike and make things even more 'interesting,' perhaps even considering how to help it strike. The woman was shameless, insufferable-and so much herself that Mriga suddenly found herself liking Ischade intensely.

"Excellent," Mriga said. "What needs to be done?"

"If you haven't buried him already," Ischade said, "do so. Otherwise we would find him on the wrong side of the frontier ... and matters would become even more complicated than they are at the moment."

"Very well. When will we be leaving?"

"Midnight, of course: from a place where three roads meet. Ideally, there should be dogs howling-"

Tyr gave Ischade an ironic look, tilted up her head and let out a single long note, wavering down through halftones into silence.

"So that's handled," Siveni said, reaching for her spear. "And as for three roads meeting, what about the north side of that park by the Governor's Walk and the Avenue of Temples? The 'Promise of Heaven,' I think it's called."

Ischade chuckled, and they all rose. "How apt. Till midnight, then. I will provide the equipment."

"That's gracious of you, madam. Till midnight, or a touch before."

"That will do very well. Mind the second step. And the hedge: it has thorns."

Mriga walked through the open gate with satisfaction, patted the bay's neck, and stepped sidewise toward midnight. Siveni came after her, her spear shouldered and sizzling merrily, and went the same way. Only Tyr delayed for a moment, staring at the bay-then nipped it neatly in the left rear fetlock, scrambled sideways to avoid the kick, and dove past Mriga into night.

Ischade also looked at the bay; then, more wryly, at her yard's trees and bushes, still full of green fire that burned but did not consume. She waved the G.o.dfire out of existence and shut the door, thinking of old stories about h.e.l.l.

"Haught," she called toward one of the back rooms. "Stilcho."

They were there in a hurry: It never did to keep Ischade waiting. "Jobs for you both," she said, shutting the door. "Stilcho, I need a message taken to the uptown house. And on your way back, pick me up a corpse."

Dead as he was, Stilcho blanched. Haught watched him out of the corner of his eye, looking slightly amused.

"And for you," she said to Haught, watching amused in turn as he stiffened slightly, "something to exercise those talents you've been so busy improving to please me. Fetch me a spare ghost. A soldier, I think, and one without any alliances. Be off, now."

She watched them go, both of them hurrying, both of them trying to look as if they weren't. Ischade smiled and went off to look for Straton.

All it took was the sight of a slender woman-shape, cloaked in black and strolling sedately down the Avenue of Temples, to clear the midnight street to a windscoured pavement desert. Behind her followed a bizarre little parade. First came a dead man, hauling a bleating black ram and black ewe along behind him on ropes: then a live man, small and scared-looking, leading a cowed donkey with a long awkward bundle strapped across its back. He stank of wine, Mor-am did: anyone but the donkey would have been revolted. Behind him and the beast came a slight-built man whose Nisi heritage showed in his face, a man bearing a small narrow silk-wrapped package and another bulkier one, and looking as if he would rather have been elsewhere. Last of all, more or less transparent from moment to moment, came a ghost dressed in h.e.l.l-Hounds' harness. It was Razkuli, dead a long time, stealing wistful glances at the old, living h.e.l.l-Hound haunts.

The Promise of Heaven was even falser to its name than usual tonight. Word of the procession had run up the street half an hour before, and the panic-stricken ladies of the night had abandoned their usual territory in favor of one more deserving of the t.i.tle. Ischade strolled in past the stone pillar-gates of the park, looking with cool amus.e.m.e.nt at the convenient bowers and bushes scattered about for those who wished to begin their huggermuggering as soon as their agreements with the park ladies were struck. The cover, copses of cypress and downhanging willow, suited Ischade well. So did the little empty altar to Eshi in the middle of the park. Once there had been a statue of her there, but naturally the statue and its pediment had been stolen, leaving only a long boxlike slab of marble much carved with PFLS graffiti and inscriptions such as Petronius Loves Sulla.

She paused by the stone and ran gentle fingers along it. A dog's howl went wavering up into the cloudy night. Ischade looked up and smiled.

"You're prompt," she said. "It's well. Haught, bring me what you carry. Stilcho, fasten them here."

Standing by the altar, Mriga and Siveni looked around them-Mriga with interest, Siveni with wry distaste, for she was after all a maiden G.o.ddess. Ischade put her hood back and gazed at the G.o.ddesses with her beautiful oblique eyes full of silent laughter as the frightened Stilcho tethered the ram and ewe by the altar.

Haught held out one of his silken bundles. Ischade put the wrappings aside and drew forth a long curved knife of bronze, half sword and half sickle, with an edge that even in the little, dim light from the torches of the Governor's Palace still glittered wickedly keen. The flat of the blade was stained dark.

"Blood sacrifice, then," Siveni said.

"There's always sacrifice where the ones below are concerned." Ischade reached absently down to caress the ram's head. It held still in terror. "But first other business. Stilcho, I will need your service tonight, and Razku-li's. I go on a journey."

"Mistress-"

"To h.e.l.l. You are going to lend me your death, and Razkuli will lend his to this warrior-lady, and this poor creature-" she reached out to touch the wrapped bundle on the shying donkey "-as soon as I fetch him back, will lend his to the lady who limps. But you understand that while we're using those parts of your life-or death, rather-you will have to be elsewhere."

Mriga bit her lip and turned away from the sight of a dead man going pale.

"Souls need containers ... so I'll provide some till dawn; we'll be back then, and you'll find yourselves back to normal. Haught and Mor-am will stand guard till then." She stepped away from the altar, gliding past Haught and throwing him a cool look.

"Mistress-"

"Guard them well, Haught," Ischade said, not looking back at him. "I will take a dim view of any 'accidents.' I'm not done with them yet." She paced away, turning after a few seconds and beginning to walk a circle, setting wards. There was no outward sign, no fire, no sound. But Mriga felt the air grow tight, and when Ischade came about at last and gestured the circle closed, the mortals in it looked at each other in still terror, like beasts in a new-snapped trap.

"No G.o.d or man will cross that line," she said. "G.o.ddesses, your last word. Will you do this?"

"Get on with it," Siveni said. Her spear sizzled.

Mriga nodded and looked down at Tyr. The dog put her head up and howled again, softly, an eager sound.

"Very well," Ischade said, and paused by the altar, and looked over her shoulder at the donkey. There was a wheeze, the terrible sound a corpse makes when it's rolled over and the last breath leaves its lungs-only this breath went in. The tethered donkey plunged and screamed as its burden abruptly began to move, a slow underwater struggling. Ischade reached out leisurely and stripped the covering from around the body. It crumpled toward the ground, collapsing to its knees, then slowly, slowly stood. It was a young woman, terribly wounded about the breast and neck; her tunic and flounced skirts were blood-blackened and her head had a tendency to slew to one side, trying to come undone from the half severed neck.

"Well, well," Ischade said, calm-voiced, "not 'he,' but 'she.' Some poor nightwalker caught in the Stepsons' barracks, where she shouldn't have been.

Pity. Haught, uncover the lantern."

The Nisi lifted up a lantern from the ground and unshuttered it. There seemed no light in it at all; yet when Mriga looked from it to Ischade and the corpse, and the altar, they all were throwing shadows that showed impossibly blacker against the ground than the midnight they all stood in. "This won't hurt, child," said Ischade. She lifted up the sickle, and swung it at the ground. A scream followed that Mriga thought would have frozen any mortal's brain. She was irrationally satisfied to glance sideways and see Siveni's knuckles going white on the haft of her spear as the corpse fell down again.

"Well, maybe it will hurt," Ischade said, not sounding particularly moved. She straightened, holding in her free hand what looked like a wavering, silken sc.r.a.p of night. It was the shadow she had cut loose. Delicately, with one hand, she crumpled it till nothing of it showed but a fistful of darkness. Ischade held out her hand to Mriga. "Take it," she said. Mriga did. "When I tell you, swallow it. Now, then ..."

She moved to Razkuli, who stood leaning on the ghost of a sword, and watched her without eyes, and without a face, looking taut and afraid. "That one is nothing to me," said Ischade. "Her soul can go where it pleases. But yours might have some use. So ... something alive ..." She looked around her. "That tree will do nicely. Hold still, Razkuli."

The second scream was harder, not easier, to bear. Ischade straightened, shook the severed shadow out, eyed it clinically, and sliced it neatly about midway down its writhing length. One of the halves she stuffed into the rotting bole of a nearby willow, and even as she turned away toward Siveni, the willow's long bare branches put out numberless leaves of thin, trembling darkness. "Here,"

Ischade said. Siveni put out her hand and took the crumpled half-shadow as if she were being handed a scorpion.

"Stilcho," Ischade said.

Stilcho backed away a pace. Behind him, with a small, terrible smile on his face, Haught held up the lantern. The third scream was the worst of all.

"Maybe you have been suffering too much in my service," Ischade said, as she sliced his soul-shadow too and draped half of it over the branches of a shrub hard by the altar. "Maybe I should let you go back to being quite dead ..." The shrub came out in leaves and little round berries of blackness, trembling.

"We'll talk about it when I come back," said Ischade. She tucked the crumpled shadow into her dark robes. "Mor-am, Haught, guard this spot until an hour before dawn. We won't be coming back this way. Look for us at the house, by the back gate. And don't forget Stilcho's body." She glided over to the altar, lifting the dark-stained sickle again. "Be ready, G.o.ddesses."

"What about Tyr?" said Siveni.

"She'll ride this soul," said Ischade. Her hand had fallen on the ram's head again. It looked up at her, and up, and helplessly, up; and Ischade swung the sickle. In the unlight of the dark lantern, the ram's eyes blazed horribly, then emptied, and the black blood gushed out on the altar's white stone. "Now," said Ischade, a slow warm smile in her voice, and reached out to the ewe.

Mriga swallowed the little struggling darkness, in horror, and felt it go down fighting like something itself horrified and helpless. Its darkness rose behind her eyes for a moment and roared in her ears. The ewe cried out and bubbled into silence. When her vision cleared, she found herself looking at an Ischade truly dressed in shadows and grinning like one of the terrible G.o.ds who avenge for the joy of it, and at a Siveni robed and helmed in dark, only the spearhead bright.

Even Tyr had gone black-furred, but her eyes burned as a beast's will when a sudden light in darkness finds them. Tyr threw back her head and howled in good earnest. The earth beneath their feet buckled and heaved like a disturbed thing, as if in answer, and then shrugged away its paving and split.

"Call up your courage," said Ischade softly, "for now you'll need it." And she walked down into the great crack in the earth, into the fuming, sulfur-smelling dark.

Tyr dashed after her, barking; other howls echoed hers, above the earth and below it. Mriga and Siveni looked at each other and followed.

Groaning, the earth closed behind them.

Mor-am and Haught looked at each other and swallowed.

They did this again later, when the donkey, frightened and hungry past caring, stretched to the end of its tether and started browsing on the nearest shrub. It had shied away when the shrub screamed, and its broken branches began to bleed.

The donkey stood there for a while shaking, then looked hungrily over at the next nearest food, a downhanging willow with oddly dark leaves.

The willow began to weep....

The road down was a steep one. That alone would make return difficult, if the slope on h.e.l.l's far side were the same. But Mriga knew there would be other problems, judging by the sounds floating up through the murky darkness. Dim distant screams, and howls of things that were not only dogs, and terrible thick coughing grunts like those of hunting beasts all mingled in the fumy air until the ears ached, and the eyes stung not just from smoke but from trying to see the sounds' sources. For once Mriga was glad of the sharp ozone smell that came of the lightnings crackling about Siveni's spearhead; it was something familiar in the terror. And even if the lightnings were burning blue, they were better than no light at all. Ischade seemed to need no light: she went ahead sure as a cat, always with a slight smile on her face.

The way wasn't always broad, or easy, no matter what the poets said. After a long, long walk down, the sound of their footsteps began echoing back more and more quickly, until Mriga could put out her hands and touch both walls. "Here is the strait part of the course," said Ischade. One after another they had to get down on their knees and crawl-even Siveni, who grumbled and hissed at the indignity. Mriga was used to dirt and had less trouble; though the dank smell, and the way the cold, sour clods of earth seemed to press in against her, made her shudder. Right before her, Tyr's untroubled breathing and little whimpers of excitement were a comfort. At least they were until Tyr began to growl as she crawled.

The tunnel grew smaller and smaller until Mriga had to haul herself along completely flat, and swore she couldn't bear another second of it. The fifth or sixth time she swore that, the echoes suddenly widened out again. Tyr leaped out into the s.p.a.ce; Siveni almost speared her from behind in her haste to follow.

Tyr was still growling. Ischade stood in the dimness, still wearing that wickedly interested smile. Mriga looked around, dusting herself off, and could see little until Siveni came out and held the spear aloft- A growl like an earthquake answered Tyr's. Mriga looked up. h.o.a.ry, huge, and bloodstained, filling almost the whole stone-columned cavern where they stood, a Hound crouched, slavering at the sight of them. It was the same Hound that the Ilsigs said ate the moon every month, and sometimes the sun when it could catch it; though usually Ils or Siveni would drive it away. Here, though, the Hound was on its own ground, and Mriga's omniscience informed her that Siveni would be badly outmatched if she tried conclusions with it.

"Aren't you supposed to give it something?" Siveni said from behind Ischade, sounding quite casual, and fooling no one. "A cake, or some such-?"

"Do I own the moon?" Ischade said. "It wouldn't be interested in anything less, I fear." And she stood there in calm interest, as if waiting to see what would happen.

Siveni stared at the Hound. It looked at her out of hungry eyes, growled again, and licked its chops. Where its saliva dripped, the stone underfoot bubbled and smoked.

The answering growl startled Mriga as Tyr shouldered past her and Siveni. "Tyr !" she said, but Tyr, bristling, walked straight up to the Hound and snarled in its face.

The Hound reared up, its jaws wide....

"Tyr, no!" Siveni cried, and slipped forward, raising her spear. Too late: Tyr had already leapt. But the growling and snarling and roaring that began, the rolling around and scrabbling and biting, didn't have quite the sound any of them expected. And it all stopped quite suddenly to reveal the Hound on its back, its belly showing, its tail between its legs, and Tyr, flaming-eyed, holding it by the throat. It was as if a rabbit held a lion pinned, but the rabbit seemed unconcerned with such details. Tyr snarled again and somehow seized that throat, as wide and heavy as a treetrunk, in her teeth; lifted the Hound and shook it, snarling, as she would have shaken a rat; then flung the whole huge monster away. "Yi, yi, yi, yi, yi!" shrieked the chief of the Hounds of h.e.l.l, the Eater of the Sun, as it scrambled desperately to its feet, away from the little dark-furred dog, and ran for the walls. It went right into one, and through it, and was gone.

Tyr panted for a moment, then shook herself all over, sat down, and scratched.

Mriga and Siveni stared at each other, then at Ischade. "I don't understand it,"

Mriga said to her. "Perhaps you do."

Ischade smiled and held her peace. "Well," Siveni said, "she is a b.i.t.c.h ..."

Tyr swung her head around-she was washing, with one leg up-and favored Siveni with a reproachful look.

"An extraordinary one," Ischade said, "but still a b.i.t.c.h; and as such no male dog, even a supernatural one, would fight with her under any circ.u.mstances. I suppose that even here, dogs will be dogs ... Canny of you to bring her. Shall we go on?" And she swept on into the darkness that the Hound had blocked. Mriga followed, thoughtful.