The Dead of Winter Part 21

A hand shot from behind Siveni and s.n.a.t.c.hed her spear out of her grasp. Siveni whirled, but not before Mriga had executed a neat reverse-twirl of the spea.

^haft and was holding the sizzling head of it leveled at her heart. "Don't be an idiot," she said. "Harran needs you. And this town is going to need all the aggressive G.o.ds it can field on its own behalf in the next year or so, with Ranke dying on the vine and the Beysib and Nisibis pushing in from two different directions. I'm mortal enough to die successfully. And with me gone, you'll get all your attributes back. Siveni, let go-!"

"Harran's right, you are still crazy! Suppose when you die, the attributes are lost forever-confined down here! Then what happens to Sanctuary? Haven't you noticed that I've got the fighting attributes, but you've got the winning ones?

There were two sets of hands on the spear-haft now, wrestling for control; and no matter what Siveni said, they were very evenly matched. Back and forth the two of them swayed. But, "Peace," said the Queen's low voice, and both of them were struck still. Only their eyes moved and glittered as they looked at her sidewise.

"I would see this paragon over whom G.o.ddesses contend," she said. "Skotadi."

Between Mriga and Siveni and the throne, darkness folded itself together into a shadow-shape like that Ischade had cut loose from the girl-corpse and Razkuli and Stilcho. It seemed a maiden's shadow, vague around the edges, wavering but lingering in the dark air like a compact smoke. "Fetch me the shade of a man who was called Harran," said the Queen. "He will be within the walls; he was buried today."

Skotadi swayed like blown smoke, bowing, and attenuated into the paler dark. The hold on Siveni and Mriga loosened, so they could stand up. But the spear was missing. The Queen was leaning it against one arm of her throne, and its head was dead metal, smoking gently in the braziers' gray light. "Since you cannot decide," the Queen said, "he shall."

As she spoke, Skotadi came into being again and bowed before the Queen.

"Majesty," she said, "there is no such man within the gates."

Even Ischade looked surprised at that. "Impossible!" Siveni cried. "We buried him!"

The Queen turned dark eyes on her. "If my handmaid says he is not here, he is not."

Mriga was out of her reckoning. "If he's not here, where else could he be?"

"Heaven?" Siveni said, plainly thinking of all the way they'd come, possibly for nothing.

Ischade looked wry. "Someone from Sanctuary'!" she said.

"Everyone who dies comes here," said the Queen. "How long they stay, and what they make of this place while they're here, is their business. But very few are the mortals who don't have something to expiate before they move on. Still ..."

She pondered for a moment, looking interested. Mriga thought back to that look of weary interest on Ischade's face, and hope woke in her. "There is only one other possibility."

Tyr leaped up, barking excitedly, and ran a little way toward the great door: then turned and barked again, louder, dancing from foot to foot where she stood.

"Burial enables one to pa.s.s the frontier," said the Queen. "It does not compel one to pa.s.s ..."

Tyr ran for the door, yipping. Mriga looked in shock at Siveni, remembering how Tyr hadn't wanted to get into the boat ...

The Queen rose from her throne. "Skotadi! My Lord's chariot." Siveni abruptly found herself holding her spear: It was working again, but seemed much subdued.

"Madam, G.o.ddesses," said the Queen, "let us see where the little one leads us."

Somehow or other the door was only a few steps away this time. Outside it stood a great iron chariot with four coalblack chargers already harnessed, and Skotadi stood on the driver's side, holding the reins. They climbed in and Skotadi whipped up the horses.

The chariot rolled through the courtyard and out the gates in utter silence.

Outside in the streets, the cries and lamentation became muted too, and finally ceased in astonishment and dread-for not in many a decade, Mriga's omniscience told her, had the underworld's Queen come out of her dark halls. The only sound was Tyr's merry barking ahead of them as she led the way.

Mriga found it difficult to look at Siveni as they drove westward down Governor's Walk, and Siveni would not look at her at all. It needed no omniscience to hear the anger rumbling like suppressed thunder in her. "Look,"

she whispered to Siveni, "you know I'm right."

"No, I don't." Siveni paused a moment, watching the dark, familiar streets go by, and then said, "You wrecked it, you know that? You and he would have been out of here by now. And I would have managed: I always manage." She paused again. "Dammit, Mriga, I'm a maiden G.o.ddess! He's in love with me, and I can't give him what he wants of me! But you can. And if I stay down here, you get my attributes-all but that one. My priest gets what he wants-me. And you get him-"

Mriga looked long at Siveni, who would not look back, and began to love her crazily, in somewhat the same manner as she had crazily admired Ischade. "I thought you were the one claiming that the attributes would stay down here-"

Siveni ignored this. "I wasn't entirely myself when he called me back," she said. "I made him lose a hand for my sake. The least I could do is make sure he lives long enough to get some use out of his new one."

The chariot turned south, past the tanners' quarter. "You're a full immortal,"

said Mriga. "You can't die."

"If I really want to ... yes, I can," Siveni said, very quietly. "She did it, didn't she?"

There was no arguing with that, whatever Ischade's opinions on the subject might be. Mriga let out a pained breath.

Ahead of them Tyr was running excitedly past the town animal pens, toward a bridge. It looked exactly like the bridge over the White Foal, where corpses had so often been nailed and gangs had scuffled over their boundaries. Past the bridge crouched the Downwind's ramshackle houses, Ischade's neighborhood. But the river running under the old bridge was that cold, black river that smoked its mists into the thunder-gray day. The ferryman was nowhere to be seen. On the far sh.o.r.e, in the streets among the shanties and rotting houses, milled dark crowds of the dead, but none of them used the bridge.

Tyr galloped up the curved upstroke of the bridge and skidded and galumphed and almost fell down the down-stroke of it, yapping crazily. The chariot followed.

Hooves that should have boomed on the planks did not. Tyr was already down off the bridge, arrowing through the crowds like a hound on a line, giving tongue.

Confused, the dead parted before and behind her, leaving a road the chariot could follow. And then Tyr went no further, but they saw her jump almost up to head level once or twice, licking in overjoyed frenzy at the face of a dark form burdened with some long awkward object over his shoulders ...

"Harran!"

Mriga was out of the chariot and running without knowing quite how she'd managed it. Beside her Siveni was keeping pace, tucking her tunic up out of the way, the spear bobbing on one shoulder and spitting lightning like fireworks. The dead got hurriedly out of their way. Mriga shot Siveni a second glance: that tunic was more gray than black, suddenly. But Siveni didn't seem to notice or care.

And there, there, confused-looking, grimy, shadowed, but tall and fair and bearded, dear and familiar, him ... They managed to slow down just enough to avoid knocking him over, but as soon as his eyes cleared he knew them, and their embrace was violent and prolonged.

"What-why-how are you-"

"Are you all right? Did it hurt much?"

"No, but- What's she doing here?"

"She showed us the way. No, Tyr, he means Ischade, don't look so hurt-"

"We buried you, why didn't you-"

"I couldn't leave him. He's hurt. Look, there's an arrow through his-"

"You a.s.s, you're deadf"

"... Leg-yes, I know! But he's-"

Stillness fell all around them. The black chariot stood hard by, and as the white-robed figure stepped down from it, Harran looked up. Most carefully he sank to one knee in the dirty street, laid down the limp, bloodied young man he was carrying, and kneeling, bowed himself slowly double. He was a priest, and a healer, and had worked in Death's shadow before: he knew her when he saw her.

Siveni looked at him, and at Mriga, and tossed her spear away. It lay scorching the dirt, afire as if it lay yet in the furnace where the thunderbolts were forged. Her robes shimmered gray, and the Queen's blinding white, in its light.

Quickly, and none too gracefully-for she had had little practice at this sort of thing-she went down on her knees in front of the Queen of h.e.l.l, and bowed her bright head right down to the dirt. Her helmet slipped off and rolled aside; she ignored it. "Madam, please," she said, in a m.u.f.fled voice, "take me. Let them go."

"What?" Harran said, looking up from Tyr, who was washing his face again.

"Your G.o.ddesses have come to beg your life of me," said the Queen. "But you know the ancient price for letting a soul go back up that road once it's come down."

"No!" Harran said, shocked. And then, remembering to whom he spoke, "Please, no!

I'm dead-but my town's not. It needs her. Mriga, talk her out of this!"

Mriga could only look at him, and not steadily: Her eyes were blurring. "She also has offered to pay the price," said the Queen. "They almost came to blows over it. They cannot choose. I offer you the choice."

Harran's jaw moved as his teeth ground. "No," he said at last. "I won't go-not at that price. Send them home. But-"

"We're not leaving without him," Mriga said.

Siveni looked up from the dirt, her eyes flashing "Certainly not."

The place was becoming brighter. Was it Siveni's spear, Mriga wondered, or something else? The buildings seemed almost as bright as if Sanctuary's usual greasy sunlight shone on them. All around, the dead were blinking and staring.

"Let him at least go," Mriga said. "We'll both stay."

"Yes," Siveni said.

Death's Queen looked somberly from one of them to the other.

Tyr slipped away from Harran's side and up next to Siveni-then jumped up and put her delicate, dusty forefeet right on the white robes of the Queen. She looked up into her face with big brown eyes.

"I'll stay too," Tyr said.

Mriga and Siveni and Harran all started violently. Only Ischade looked away and hid a smile.

The Queen looked down at the dog with astonishment, and finally reached out to scratch her behind one ear. She looked over at Ischade. "This orgy of self sacrifice," she said, with the slightest, driest smile, "comes on behalf of Sanctuary?"

"More or less, madam," said Ischade, matching the smile. "I question whether it deserves it."

"It does not. But how rarely any of us get what we deserve. Which may be for the best." The Queen looked at her supplicants-one mortal and one G.o.ddess kneeling, one G.o.ddess standing, and (apparently) one more leaning against her and having the good place behind her ears scratched. "No wonder you two have been having such trouble achieving union. It's a trinity you're part of, and without your third there's never agreement on anything. But with him-"

"Them," Tyr said.

The Queen looked wry. "A four-person trinity?- a.s.suredly, I must get rid of all of you somehow," she said. "There would be no peace for any of us with all of you walking around here shining and tearing up the place. And arguing." In this warming, melting light, she seemed much less grave and awful than she had. Mriga even thought that her eyes crinkled in amus.e.m.e.nt; but in the growing radiance, and the way it reflected dazzling from her veil, it was becoming hard to tell.

"But the law is still the law. The price must be paid-"

There was a long pause.

"We could split it four ways," Harran said.

Siveni looked at him in shock, then smiled. "Why, you're my priest indeed. Each of us could spend a quarter of our time here," she said to the Queen. "We could take it in turns-"

The Queen was silent a while. "I believe I could defend that arrangement to my husband," she said at last. "But your priest is dead, G.o.ddesses. He has no body to go back to, any more than that poor child-"

"He's not a child really," Harran said, "he's about seventeen, and I keep trying to tell you all, he's not dead."

"Why ..." The Queen looked closely at the young man's soul-body in the growing light. "Indeed he's not," she said. "This soul is shattered."

Mriga stood there in shock, thinking of the young body underneath Harran's, stiff and still-but, she now remembered with amazement, not cold. "He was struck down in the attack that killed you, Harran," Ischade said, "but though his body survived the blow, apparently his mind didn't. It happens sometimes-a soul is too fragile to withstand the idea of its own demise and disintegrates. Leaving the body still breathing, but empty-"

"The arrow missed the main artery," Harran said. "The wound'll hurt, but it'll heal-"

"Go then," said the Queen, fondling Tyr's ears and smiling slightly at her.

"Enough has happened for one day. Go, before my husband comes back and finds you here and starts an argument." There were nervous looks all around at this prospect. "But perhaps one of you would stay for now?" And the Queen looked down at Tyr.

Tyr slipped down, ran to Harran, collected a hug from him and slurped his face then bounced over to the iron chariot, jumped into it, and sat there grinning, with her tongue hanging out, waiting to be taken for a ride.

"I can manage the actual transfer to the new body easily enough," Ischade said, leading Mriga, Siveni, and the still slightly bewildered Harran away. "But you will all of you owe me large favors...."

"Well repay them twice over,'' Siveni said, sounding somewhat grim. It was apparent she didn't like the idea of owing anybody anything.

Harran was looking from one of them to the other. "You came to h.e.l.l after me?"

Mriga looked with quiet joy at her lord and love as Ischade led them all back toward the upper world. "They don't call it that here," she said. She was beginning to understand why.

Behind them, Tyr had her ride-the first of many-and was off about her own business when Death came home from work. The Queen of h.e.l.l rose up to greet him as always, went stately to the great doors, cool and grave and shining. There her husband dropped the bare bones that were his old joke with her, leaned the blade that is also an oar up against the dark doorsill, and went to her, laughing and shedding this one of his many forms. There was none to see the dark glory that h.e.l.l's Queen took in her arms, or the way her gravity dropped away in the presence of that shadowy beauty which men dare not imagine; the way her light kindled at his touch, like day in night's embrace. They laughed together, madly delighted as first-time lovers, as they always had been; as they always would be.

"Dear heart," said the Queen of h.e.l.l, "a dog followed me home. Can I keep it?"

"This isn't quite how I pictured h.e.l.l," Harran was saying dubiously.

"Nor I," said Ischade, sounding almost cheerful as she led them on through the under-Downwind. Indeed the place looked very little like h.e.l.l just now. Downwind or not, this place was looking remarkably good: the buildings less rotten, the shanties sounder, the people all around them shadowy still, but strong and fair and looking surprised at that. The sky had begun to blaze silver, and Siveni's robes and Mriga's own were back to normal. Mriga looked at Siveni and saw that even her 'smelly goatskin' looked fearsome and deadly-beautiful rather than ragged. Ischade's dark beauty burned more perilously than ever. And were her robes not quite as dark as they had been? And Harran ...

But no. Harran looked as marvelous as he always had when Mriga was crazy. She smiled at him. The prospect of life with him, some kind of life-though the details were vague yet-shone on everything, and from everything, in a patina of antic.i.p.ation and joy. The world was beginning all over again.

"There's no garbage in the gutters," Harran said, astonished, as Ischade led them along a little Downwind street toward the river.

"No," Mriga said. Every minute the old decrepit houses were looking more like palaces, and every curbside weed had its flower. "It's as she said. One makes of this place what one chooses. h.e.l.l-or something else. And the upper world is the same ... just a little less amenable to the change. More of a challenge."

They walked down a slope, along the riverbank, being careful of their footing.

The river had brightened from black to pewter-gray, though still it smoked silver in the predawn chill. Across it Sanctuary rose, a Sanctuary none of its habitues would have recognized-a Maze full of palaces, a Serpentine all snug townhouses and taverns, everywhere light, contentment, splendor: a promise, and a joke.

"It could be like this, the real world," Mriga said as Ischade led them along the riverside. "It will be, some day ... though maybe not until time stops. But it will, won't it?" She turned to Ischade, her eyes shining in the growing day.

"Not being a G.o.ddess," said Ischade, "I wouldn't like to say." She paused by a little gate, swung it open. "Here is the barrier, all. What is-will rea.s.sert itself. Beware the contrast."

"But this is what is," Mriga said, as first Siveni, then Harran, pa.s.sed through the gate, and the silver day flowed past them into Ischade's weedy back yard.