The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (32 page)

"The nerve," Siveni said.

"True for you, young goddess," said the ferryman, "and that's it for them as says such things, for they're always hungry, as I say." He glanced at the water.

"Never you mind, then, you just put your pretty selves in the boat, you and your friend, and give me your hard money. She don't really care what goes on out here, just so you be nice and don't tear things up, you hear? Speak her fair, that's the way. They do say she's a soft heart for a pretty face, remembering how she came to be down here; though we don't talk about that in front of her, if you take my meaning. In you get. Is that all of you?"

"One moment," Mriga said, and whistled for Tyr; then, when there was no answer, again. Tyr appeared after a moment, her gold piece still held in her teeth, and trotted to the boat, whining at it softly as it bobbed in the water. "Come on, Tyr," she said. "We have to go across. He's on the other side." Tyr whined again, looking distrustfully at the boat, and finally jumped in.

"The little dog too?" said the ferryman. "Dogs go for half fare." Tyr stood on her hind legs to give the ferryman the coin, then sat down on the boat's middle seat, grinning, and barked, thumping her tail on the gunwale.

"Why, thank you, missy, that's a kindness and so I shall," said the ferryman, hastily pocketing the second half of Tyr's coin, which he had bitten in two.

"They don't overpay us down here, and times are hard all over, eh? It's much appreciated. Don't put your hands in the water, ladies. Anyone else? No? Cheap lot they must be up there these days. Off we go, then." And off they went, leaving behind the sad, pushing crowd on the bank. Mriga sat by the gunwale with one arm around Tyr, who slurped her once, absently, and sat staring back the way they'd come, or looking suspiciously at the water. The air grew colder. Shuddering, Mriga glanced first at Siveni, who sat looking across the wide river at the far bank; then at Ischade. The necromant was gazing thoughtfully into the water. Mriga looked over the side, and saw no reflection

... at first. After a little while she averted her eyes. But Ischade did not raise her head until the boat grounded again; and when she looked up, some of that eternal assurance was missing from her eyes.

"There are the gates," the ferryman said. "I'll be leaving you here. Watch your step, the ground's much broken. And a word, ladies, by your leave: watch yourselves in there. So many go in and don't come out again." Looking at the dark town crouching behind brazen gates, Mriga could believe it. Hell looked a great deal like Sanctuary.

One by one they got out of the boat and started up the slope. Siveni was last out, and so busy looking up at the rocky ground that she missed what was right under her feet. She lost her footing and almost fell, just managing to catch herself with her spear. "Hell," she said, a bitter joke: The spear spat lightnings.

The ferryman, watching her, frowned slightly. "We don't call it that here," he said. "Do we now, love?"

The bones rattled slightly. "Ah well. Off we go then...." And they were alone on the far shore.

The gates were exactly like those of the Triumph Gate not far from the Governor's Palace, but where those were iron, these were brazen, and locked and mightily barred. The four stood together, hearing more strongly than they had yet the sounds of lamentation from inside. It was beginning to sound less threatening, the way a horrible smell becomes less horrible with exposure.

"Well," Siveni said, "what now? Is there some spell we need?" Ischade shook her head, looking mildly surprised. "I don't normally use this route," she said. "And the few times I've bothered, hell's gates have been open. Very odd indeed. Someone has been making changes ..."

"Someone who's expecting us, I'll wager," Siveni said. "Allow me." She lifted up the spear, leaned back with it like a javelin-thrower, and threw it at the gates. For that moment, lightning turned everything livid and froze everything still. Thunder drowned out the cries of the damned inside. Then came a few seconds of violet afterimages and ears ringing; then the darkness, in which by the tamer light of Siveni's spearhead they could see hell gates lying twisted and shattered on the paving. Siveni picked up her spear, then swept through the opening and past the wreckage, looking most satisfied.

"She does that rather well," Ischade said as she and Mriga and Tyr followed after.

"Yes, she always has been good at tearing things up," Mriga said. She looked over her shoulder at the gates and willed them back in place, as she'd done earlier with Ischade's wards. To her great distress, they didn't reappear.

"We're on other gods' ground now," Ischade said as they turned away from the gates, moving past the shadows of empty animal pens and around the spur of the great wall that sheltered the Bazaar. "Nearly all powers but theirs will be muted here, I fear. If your otherself tries that stunt again inside, I suspect she'll be in for a surprise, for she was still outside hell while she did it this time."

Mriga nodded as they made their way through the streets that led to the Bazaar. Almost everything was as it should be-the trash, the stink, the garbage in the gutters, the crowds. But the dark shapes moving there had a look about them of not caring where they were-an upsetting contrast to those stranded on the far side of the river, who seemed to know quite well. Looking across the city for evidence of hellfire, Mriga found nothing but the same scattered plumes of smoke and the smouldering reek that prevailed in the Sanctuary of the daylit world. Yet the overhanging clouds were underlit as if with many fires. As they walked further, Mriga got a chance to see why, and came to understand that there was a difference here between the dead and the damned. Many of the dark people going by carried their own hellfires with them-bright conflagrations of rage, coal-red frustrations, banked and bitter, the hot light sucking darknesses that were envy and greed, the blinding fire-shot smokes of lust and hunger for power that fed and fed and were never consumed. Some few of the passersby bore evidence of old burning, now long gone. They were burnt-out cinders, merely existing, neither living nor dead. But worst of all, to Mriga's thought, were those many, many dead who had never even lived enough to burn a little, who had given up both sin and passion as useless. They walked dully past the flaming damned, and past goddesses, and neither hellfire nor the cold clean light of Siveni's spear found anything in their eyes at all. She soon enough found worse. There were places that seemed damned as surely as people; spots where murders or betrayals had taken place, and where they took place again and again, endlessly, the original participants dragging the passing dead in to re-enact the old horrors. Some shapes walking there were less dark than others, but wore their torments differently-serpents growing from their flesh and gnawing at it; animal heads on human bodies, or vice versa; limbs that went gangrenous, rotted, fell off, regrew, while their owners walked about with placid looks that said nothing was wrong, nothing at allHarran is down here now, Mriga thought. How will we find him? Roasting in his desire for Siveni, eaten away by his guilt over the way he used me once? Or were those passions so recent that they never quite took root in his soul-so that we might find him like one of the dull ones who don't care about anything? Suppose he... doesn't want to come back....

The four of them passed through the Bazaar. They went hurriedly, for they found it peopled with beasts that milled about with seeming purpose, crying out to one another in animals' voices, neighs and roars and screams. But the wares being hawked there were human beings, chained, dumb, with terrible pleading eyes. The four went quickly out into the south road that followed the walls of the Governor's Palace. "Since all this is mirroring Sanctuary somewhat," Siveni said, peering around her by the light of her spear, and looking harrowed, "I would suppose that the one we're looking for is in the Palace."

"So would I," Ischade said, quite calm. "The south gate is closed." Mriga noticed that on Ischade's far side Tyr had dropped back to pace beside her, gazing up at her with a peculiar expression.

"What exactly is your arrangement with her?" Mriga said, as softly as she could and still be heard above the constant low rumor of pain that filled the streets.

"You must have one."

Ischade was silent. "Please pardon me," Mriga said. "I shouldn't have asked. Power is a private thing."

"You need not come with us," Siveni said, without turning around, from ahead of them. "You've already fulfilled your part of the bargain. Though we haven't paid you yet-"

Ischade didn't stop walking, but there was a second's hard look in her eyes that was more than just the reflection of Siveni's lightnings. "Don't project your fears on me, young goddesses," she said, the voice silken, the eyes dark and amused. "I have no reason not to see her."

Mriga and Siveni both most carefully held their peace. Tyr, though, whined once and wagged her tail, and for the rest of the walk never once left Ischade's side. Ischade appeared not to notice.

"See," she said. "The gate."

The south gate looked much as it did in Sanctuary, and made it plain that some passions had not entirely died out here; the posts were splashed with PFLS and gang graffiti. But there were no guards, no Stepsons, nothing but iron gates that stood open. The great courtyard inside was drowned in shadow, and the wailings of hell seemed subdued here. On the far side of the courtyard lay what had looked like the Palace from a distance, but here proved itself to be an edifice not even Ranke in its flower could have built: all ebony porticoes and onyx colonnades, smoke-black pillars and porches, massive domes and shadowy towers, halls piled on mighty halls, rearing up in terrible somber grace till all was lost in the lowering overcast. Ischade never paused, but went right in toward the great pile-a graceful, dark-robed figure, small against the great expanse of dark, dusty paving: and trotting beside her went the little dog. There on the threshold Siveni glanced at Mriga. "Mriga, quick," she said, "do all of us a favor. Let me do the talking in there." Mriga stared. "Sister, what're you thinking of?"

"Prices," Siveni said. "Just as you are. Look. You've enough power to pay her off afterward-"

"And where are you planning to be?"

"Don't start," Siveni said, "we're losing her." And she went after Ischade. Mriga went after Siveni, her heart growing cold. "Anyway, this is my priest we're talking about," Siveni was saying.

"'Your'-T. Siveni, don't you dare-"

The great steps up to the Palace loomed, and Ischade was a third of the way up them by the time the goddesses caught up with her and Tyr. Silently they went up the rest of the stairs together, and Mriga was aware of her heart beating hard and fast, not from the climb. They passed over a wide porch, floored in jet, and a doorway loomed up before them, containing great depths of still, blackness, silent, cold. Against that dark Siveni's spearhead sizzled faint and pitiful, the smoking wick of a lamp of lightnings, drowning in the immensity of night. They slipped in.

Far, far down the long hall they had entered-miles and years down it-some pale light seethed, a sad ash-gray. It came from three sources, but details took much longer to see. The four of them had walked and walked through that silence that swallowed every sound and almost every thought before Mriga realized that the ashen light came from braziers. It was a long time more before the two onyx thrones set between two broad tripod-dishes became apparent. A few steps later Mriga's mouth turned dry, and she stopped, her courage failing her ... for there was a shape seated in the right-hand throne.

It was not as if Mriga was unprepared for the one she knew would be sitting there-the sweet young mistress of spring, who fell in love with the lord of the dead, and died of her love, the only way to escape heaven and rule hell by his side. But all Mriga's preparation now proved useless. Of all things in hell, only she wore white: a maiden's robe, radiant even in the sad light of the braziers. Beneath the maiden veil her beauty was searing, a fire of youth, a thing to break the heart, as Siveni's was-but there was no healing in it for the broken one afterward. Hell's Queen sat proud in the throne, cool, passionless, and terrible. She held a sword across her lap, but it was black of blade from much use; and the scales lay beside the throne, thick with dust. Hell had apparently made its Queen over in its own image, depriving her even of the passion that was the reason she had come ... and, like those she ruled, she was resigned to it. Mriga suddenly understood that the frightful resignation on ghost-Razkuli's face was a family resemblance.

Mriga looked over at Ischade. The necromant stood quite composed with Tyr beside her, and gracefully, slowly bowed to the still woman on the throne. The gesture was respectful enough, but the air of composure still smelled of Ischade's eternal cool arrogance. Even here there's no dominating her, Mriga thought, annoyed, and admiring Ischade all over again.

"Madam Ischade," said hell's Queen. Her voice was soft and somber, a low voice and a rich one. There was no believing it had ever laughed. "A long time it is since you last came visiting. And you never before brought friends."

"They are on business, madam," Ischade said, her bearing toward the Queen as frank and straightforward as to anyone else she perceived as peer. "Siveni Gray Eyes, whom you may remember. And Mriga, a new goddess-perhaps the same as Siveni: They're working it out." A secret smile here. "And Tyr." Tyr sat down, her tail thumping, and looked with interest at the Queen of hell. She did not say "Welcome." She said, "I know why you've come. I tried to stop you, several times, through one or another of my servants. Whatever happens to you now is on your own heads."