Gates of Hell (2 page)

“I have dispensation,” the priestess answered. Her voice was soft, the contempt at having to speak to an outcast icy. Kacina looked surprised at having been spoken to at all, but bowed to the girl and moved aside. She hurriedly joined her women as far away from the fanatic as they could get without showing the disrespect of fleeing from one of the Saved.

Pyr shook his head as Dosin and the priestess continued toward him. Shadow and light from the wavering candles played around them as they approached. He waited, steeling himself for an encounter with one of the fanatics, just barely keeping the snarl out of his throat. The small man took the chair opposite Pyr. The girl remained standing, hovering like a ghost behind Dosin’s back. The white draperies of her dress and her long, stringy hair stirred eerily in the room’s faint draft. Pyr tried to ignore her for the moment, though he could feel the fire of her insanity radiating toward him. Hardly the sort of warmth he craved.

Linch and Pilsane waited by the bar and game board, inconspicuous, but within hearing distance. Pyr lay his hands flat on the table, looking down, his hat once again shadowing his face.

“Good evening.” Dosin’s voice was steady, but Pyr heard the grating of the datarat’s nerves. Bad news, then, or none at all. “I bring my apologies at my ineptitude, Captain Pyr.”

Pyr sharply lifted his head to glare at the native. He kept his voice soft. “Oh?”

Dosin quickly pointed to the girl behind him. “This Sister is called Lita. She was sent to me, and I brought her to you.” He hastily vacated his chair and pushed the girl into it. She sat with a shocked thud. Dosin clamped his hands on her shoulders to keep her from fleeing. “This one has brought many deaths,” he introduced Pyr. “With your help, little Sister, he can bring many more.”

Pyr forced himself to look at the girl. He didn’t think she could be much more than eighteen. Some of her scars were probably nearly as old. The most recent marks seemed to be a still-inflamed trio of triangular brands on her forehead and cheeks. Marks of the highest order of the native religion, identifying her as one of Idel’s own sisters. She was marked to die young and in a great deal of pain. Knowing she looked forward to it made Pyr’s skin crawl.

He didn’t let his revulsion show. “I am a killer of many,” he told Lita. She smiled shyly at him. Her teeth had been filed to razor points. Pyr swallowed quietly and went on. “How can you help me, Sister?”

“Both moons are full tonight,” she told him.

“It happens once every six years,” Dosin explained. “Hunters’ moons, Captain. It’s a night when the goddess looks favorably on your kind.”

“Which means?” Pyr asked with cold patience.

Dosin squeezed Lita’s narrow shoulders. “Lord Idel says he will speak with you tonight. Lord Idel knows a great deal about what goes on in the Empire,” the datarat hurried to explain. “Death is his vocation. He makes it his business to know who deals death among the Bucon and along the borders.” After some hesitation, Dosin added, “He’s one of my best sources of data. But with the plague… he’s only interested in fulfilling the prophecies.”

“You are an instrument of the goddess,” Lita added piously. Her mad eyes, a pale silver-blue, looked at Pyr with adoration.

“Idel sees your being in port during Hunters’ Festival as a sign from the goddess,” Dosin explained.

The girl reached into the bosom of her dress and brought out something clenched in her small fist. Pyr held out his hand and she placed a piece of jewelry in his palm. It was warm from contact with her flesh, the colors of the three jewels set in the circular gold brooch matching the ruby, amethyst, and onyx in the rings he wore. He closed his hand on the brooch. It did not feel like a copy. When Pyr looked up, he saw Linch and Pilsane standing over him, and could hear Mik clattering down the stairs.

“I think we better have a talk with Lord Idel.”

Pilsane took a step back. “We?”

Mik stopped behind the priestess and patted the girl on the head. His face was flushed a dark copper, and his breath came out in puffs of steam. “I don’t want to end up looking like the little one here.”

The girl’s face was too ruined to show any proper expression, but Pyr watched her icy eyes glint with fury. Apparently she’d expected them to joyfully run off into the arms of her cult.

“Careful,” Pyr warned Mik. “She might bite.”

The engineer snatched his hand back and wiped it on his pants’ leg. “That’s why I’m not going to the temple,” he explained. “They
all
bite.”

“Very bad habits,” Linch agreed. He glanced over at the women who’d crowded into a corner like herdbeasts. “I do have plans for the evening, Captain.”

“And this really isn’t any of our business,” Pilsane added. He smiled. “Have a nice time.”

At least his teeth weren’t pointed. Pyr sighed as his three men backed off into the shadows. “It is my affair,” he acknowledged.

Dosin shook his head unhappily. “I’ll never understand Bucons.”

“Would your men not follow you into death?” the horrified priestess asked.

Pyr shrugged. “It’s not a strong possibility.” He stood, kicking his chair back across the floor. It scraped loudly against the polished wood. “Shall we go?”

Dosin shuddered. “I’ve come as far as I plan on the Hunters’ night. The priestess will protect you,” he promised as Pyr glowered at him. “Good hunting, Captain.”

Pyr didn’t insist. He didn’t mention any payment for the datarat’s services, either. Dosin pretended not to notice as Pyr came around the table. He grabbed the girl by the upper arm, and his fingers dug into her fragile skin as he pulled her to her feet. The layers of scarring felt even worse than they looked. “Then it’s into the night with us, Lita,” he told her with grim cheerfulness.

She gave him a saw-toothed smile. “Good hunting for us both,” she said, radiating blood-lust and anticipation.

Pyr’s eyes met Pilsane’s as the navigator looked up briefly from his solitary game, then he shoved the girl ahead of him toward the door.

Kacina waited before the entrance, blocking his way. The big woman looked guilty. She held out a nearly full bottle of Rust as he approached. “Lord Pyr,” she said humbly. “I want to return these to you. It is unholy to hide from death.” She glanced covertly at the priestess. “Even for an outcast.”

Lita gave Kacina an approving nod. Pyr’s hand clenched even tighter on the girl’s frail arm. Her only reaction to the pain was a mildly romantic sigh.

“Please, Lord Pyr,” Kacina pleaded. “Take back your gift.”

“Demons! I have no time for this nonsense.” He used his free hand to push Kacina aside. “You’ll be glad of the medicine once the madwoman is out of sight.” He noticed for the first time how warm Lita’s skin was. Warm, with a faint film of sweat on this winter night. Early signs of the plague. The brightness of her eyes wasn’t just madness, then. No happy death at the hands of the torturer for her. He wondered if he should pity her. It was a good thing he hadn’t decided to wait another two hours for his own hit of the drug.

Kacina insistently pressed the bottle into his hand. He took it, tossed it over his shoulder. “Linch.” He didn’t have to look to know the pilot had caught the bottle.

“Captain?”

“Have a short and specific discussion about matters of life and death with the ladies after I’m gone.”

“As you wish, Captain.”

“Thank you.”

He glared at Kacina, and the repentant Orlinian lumbered hurriedly out of his way. As he pushed Lita before him into the cold darkness, he grumbled, “Women.”

“Demons,” Pyr muttered as he strode down the center of the brick-paved street.

The lumpy paving was slippery beneath his boots. The natives barred their doors at sunset, leaving the night to heretics, outcasts, the Saved, and well-armed outworlders. The small spaceport had its own lighting but, once in the streets of the primitive city, a torch, or good night vision, was necessary. Pyr had better-than-average hearing, but average sight. And no torch tonight. Even with both small moons at full, it was difficult to find his way in the post-midnight quiet.

Lita wriggled out of his grasp soon after they left Kacina’s. She flitted ahead of him, her draperies doing a ghost-dance. Her insane laughter made the night seem colder as he threaded carefully after her. Every now and then he could hear the howling of the prowling Initiates. Once he heard the screams of one of the suicides who’d decided it was better to be a sacrifice to the Hunter than the plague. So far, he hadn’t seen anyone but his guide.

Pyr balled his hands into fists inside his deep coat pockets and bit his tongue to keep from shouting at her. It was bad enough that his boots rang hollowly against the old stones with every step, and his leather coat creaked quietly as it swung around his legs. No use adding voice to the sounds that already filled the darkness. He glanced up between overhanging roofs of old buildings to see both moons staring down, like blind eyes turned on the dying. The Hunter’s Eyes, he’d heard Kacina call them—and guiltily make the outcast’s sign against death. The worst thing about Orlin’s death cult, he decided, was that since the Bucons built a port on this backward world, Orlinian missionaries were spreading their religion to other border cultures.

He abandoned watching the moons as the girl came dancing out of a side street just a few feet ahead of him. She beckoned him on, then bounded ahead to explore the deep shadows of doorways. Pyr paused long enough to check on the emptiness of the street crossing his path, then stomped after Lita.

He knew someone was following him within a half dozen steps into deeper silence. Not at street level, but above, gliding along the walls of the brick and wooden buildings just a few feet over his head. Noiseless—but for the nearly undetectable hum of anti-grav pads sliding along the natural materials of the houses. Not a native killer, then. No Orlinian would use anything but blessed steel on a night like this. And no native cutthroat would venture out of the port neighborhoods to risk an encounter with blessed steel. Guild assassin, then. Persey had probably complained to the authorities.

Pyr turned his head, listening carefully as a pack of Initiates began shrieking and baying no more than a block away. There were shouts of joy and sounds of pleading. Pyr could just barely make out the slap of bare feet and thud of boots on the cobblestones. Lita ran back to him and grabbed his hand, trying to pull him forward. Her skin had gone from hot to chilled and clammy. The moonlight stripped her paleness down to corpse white.

“I’ve made no kill.” She tugged hard, pleading, “Let us join the hunt. There’s time to bring blood to Idel.”

“Not now, girl.”

“Please!” she wheedled as a man came running into view.

The hunt’s intended victim came pelting toward them, a big man in a fringed suede jacket, his long hair flying wildly behind him. He was followed closely by a trio of white-robed wraiths. Pyr saw knives washed by moonlight in their upraised hands.

Pyr shook his head, and threw the girl off. He heard the assassin drop to the ground behind him, sensibly taking advantage of the activity in the street. The Guild operative thought he’d have time to . make his kill, then jump out of the hunt’s way.

Very good strategy
, Pyr agreed.

Pyr projected the thought so loudly that his would-be murderer was clutching his temples in surprised pain by the time Pyr turned to face him, weapon in hand.

Being a telepath
, Pyr whispered into the Bucon assassin’s stunned mind,
has proved to have many uses
.

His was a talent strangers found out about as they died. But instead of killing the assassin, Pyr stunned him as he started to scream, then shoved the falling body against a wall as the hunt surrounded him.

Pyr whirled, shouting, “Mik!”

He relaxed as he saw the engineer banging a pair of Orlinian heads together. Bones crunched as Mik laughed, and kicked out at the third attacker. The third native danced agilely away, brandishing the knife like the madman he was.

The Initiate was a boy about Lita’s age, and just as scarred. He saw Pyr, and lunged forward, knife aimed at Pyr’s chest. Lita screeched, throwing herself between Pyr and the blade. Pyr grabbed the girl around the waist and fired his weapon, thumbing the setting to maximum. The boy glowed blue-white briefly, then died.

Pyr kept his arm around the girl while he looked at his engineer. “Well?”

Mik jerked a thumb at the unconscious assassin. “I spotted the crawler a few blocks back and figured you could use a diversion. Wasn’t hard to get the kids to follow me.” Mik grinned. “Want me to question the Guilder?”

Pyr nodded. “Pilsane at the temple by now?” Mik nodded. “Linch?”

“Onboard the
Raptor
.”

“Good.”

The girl was humming quietly to herself, her eyes shining worshipfully up at him. “It was a beautiful death,” she told him. “Full of diamonds.”

Mik hefted the assassin over his broad shoulder.
I used to like this planet
.

I can’t think why
, Pyr answered the thought.
Meet you at the ship
.

As you say
, Mik responded as he disappeared around a dark corner.

Pyr tightened his telepathic shields, making himself alone with the girl once more. He took a deep breath of the cold air, but it didn’t help much. It was the rotting minds on this world that stank. He focused his consciousness, his concentration. An Assassin’s Guild contract was one more piece of trouble he didn’t need. He would have to send them a warning that their games were over in the border for now. Things were not business as usual for anybody in his territory until he said so.

He released his hold on the girl, but she continued to cling to him. She grasped his left hand tightly in both of hers, and raised it to her cheek. He resisted the urge to shake her off, and tried glaring at her instead. Her response was to bare her fangs in a parody of a smile—and swiftly turn her head to bury her sharpened teeth in the soft skin just below his thumb.

Pyr bellowed, and felt blood spurt into the girl’s mouth while she continued to gnaw on him. Her filed fangs went through muscle and down to bone.