The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (34 page)

"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 hell 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 hell 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 hell'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 hell, "a dog followed me home. Can I keep it?"

"This isn't quite how I pictured hell," 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 hell 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 anticipation 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. Hell-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 goddess," 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 reassert itself. Beware the contrast."

"But this is what is," Mriga said, as first Siveni, then Harran, passed through the gate, and the silver day flowed past them into Ischade's weedy back yard. Every tree burst into white blossom; the dank riverside air grew warm and sweet as if spring and summer had rooted in that garden together. The black birds in the trees looked down, and one opened its beak and, in a voice deep and bittersweet as night and love, began to sing. The barren rosebush shook itself and came out in leaves, then in a splendor of roses of every color imaginable burning white, red like evening love, and the incomparable blue; silver and pink and green and violet and even black.

"This is," Mriga said, insisting, as Ischade paused by the gate and looked through it in cool astonishment. "The waking world doesn't need to be the way it is ... not for always. Neither do you. You could be more. You could be what you are now, and more yet...."

Ischade looked down silently at what the light, the silver morning, the irresistible joy beating in the air, had made of her. Long she looked down, and lifting her hands, gazed into them as if into a mirror. Finally she lowered them and said, calm as ever, "I prefer my way."

Mriga looked a long moment at her. "Yes. Anyway, thank you," she said.

"Believe me, you'll pay well enough for what I've done for Harran." Mriga shook her head. "Down there-you knew everything that was going to happen, didn't you? But you were trying to spare us a disaster, trying to spare Sanctuary one. Without looking like it, of course, and spoiling your reputation."

"I should have hated to lose a goddess who will be creating such wonderful disturbances hereabouts in the near future," Ischade said, her voice soft and dangerous.

Mriga smiled at her. "You're not quite as you paint yourself, Lady Ischade. But your reputation is safe with me."

The necromant looked at her and smiled a slow, scornful smile. "The day it matters to me what anyone thinks of me, or doesn't think ... even the gods ...

!" she said.

"Yes," said Mriga. "And whoever raises the dead but gods? Let's go in." Ischade nodded, holding the gate. Mriga went in, and with true sunrise, the influences of the underworld died away and let day reassert itself: grimy, pallid dawn over Sanctuary, reeking with smoke and the faint taint of blood ghost-haunted, dismal, and bitter cold as befitted the first day of winter. At Ischade's back, the White Foal flowed and stank, filmed here and there with ice. But the joy hanging in the air still refused to go entirely away. She shut the gate behind her and looked up at the stairs to the house. Haught stood there, and Stilcho, swords drawn in their hands. Ischade waved them inside, assuming their obedience, and turned to regard the rosebush.

Stilcho went inside, unnerved. Haught lingered just past the doorsill. Ischade paid him no mind, if she knew he was there. Eventually she moved, and reached out to the hedge. And if Haught saw Ischade cast a long, thoughtful gaze at the whitest of the roses before reaching out to pluck the black one, he never mentioned it to her, then or ever.

Robert Lynn Asprin

"Is he asleep?"

"Asleep! Hah! He's passed out again."

Zalbar heard the whores' voices as if from a distance and wanted very badly to take exception to what they were saying. He wasn't asleep or passed out. He could understand every word that was being said. His eyes were just closed, that's all ... and damned hard to open too. Hardly worth the effort.

"I don't know why the Madame puts up with him. He's not that good-looking, or rich."

"Maybe she has a weak spot for lost puppies and losers."

"If she does, it's the first sign of it she's shown since I've been here." A loser? Him? How could they say that? Wasn't he a Hell-Hound? One of the most feared swordsmen in Sanctuary?

Struggling to focus his mind, Zalbar became aware that he was sitting in a chair. Well, sitting slumped over, the side of his head resting on something hard ... presumably a table. There was a puddle of something cold and sticky under his ear. He fervently hoped it was spilled wine and not vomit.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to carry him up to his room again. Come on. Give me a hand."

This would never do. A Hell-Hound? Being carried through a whorehouse like a common drunk?

Zalbar gathered himself to surge to his feet and voice his protests ... He sat up in bed with a start, experiencing that crystal clarity of awareness and thought that sometimes occurs when one wakes between a heavy drunk and the inevitable hangover.

Sleeping! He had been asleep! After three days of forcing himself to stay awake he had been stupid enough to start drinking!

Every muscle tense, he hurriedly scanned the room, dreading what he knew he would find.

Nothing. He was alone in the room ... his room ... what had become his room at the Aphrodisia House through Myrtis's tolerance and generosity. It wasn't here!

Forcing himself to relax, he let memories wash over him like a polluted wave. He hadn't just been drinking. He was drunk! Not for the first time, either, he realized as his mind brought up numerous repetitions of this scene for his review. The countless excuses he had hidden behind in the past were swept aside by the merciless hand of self-contempt. This was becoming a habit ... much more the reality of his existence than the golden self-image he tried to cling to. Hugging himself in his misery, Zalbar tried to use this temporary clarity of thought to examine his position.

What had he become?

When he first arrived in Sanctuary as one of Prince Kadakithis's elite bodyguard, he and his comrades had been assigned by that royal personage to clean up the crime and corruption that abounded in the town. It had been hard work and dangerous, but it was honest work a soldier could take pride in. The townspeople had taken to calling them Hell-Hounds, a title they had smugly accepted and redoubled their efforts in an attempt to live up to. Then the Stepsons had come, an arrogant mercenary company which one of the Hell Hounds, Tempus Thales, had abandoned his mess-mates to lead. That had really been the start of the Hell-Hounds' downfall. Their duties were reduced to those of token bodyguards, while the actual job of policing the town fell to the Stepsons. Then the Beysib had arrived from a distant land, and the Prince's infatuation with their Empress led him to replace his Hell-Hounds with fish-eyed foreign guards of the Beysa's choosing.

Denied even the simplest of palace duties, the Hell-Hounds had been reassigned under loose orders to "keep an eye on the brothels and casinos north of town." Any effort on their part to intercede or affect the chaos in the town proper was met with reprimands, fines, and accusations of "meddling in things outside their authority or jurisdiction."

At first, the Hell-Hounds had hung together, practicing with their weapons and hatching dark plots over wine as to what they would do when the Stepsons and Beysib guards fell from favor and they were recalled to active duty. Exclusion from the war at Wizardwall, and finally the assassination of the Emperor, had been the final straws to' break the Hell-Hounds' spirit. The chance for reassignment was now gone. The power structure in the capital was in a turmoil, and the very existence of a few veterans posted to duty in Sanctuary was doubtlessly forgotten. They were stranded under the command of the Prince, who had no use for them at all.

Both practices and meetings had become more and more infrequent as individual Hell-Hounds found themselves drawn into the ready maw of Sanctuary's flesh-dens and gaming bars. There were always free drinks and women to be had for a Hell Hound, even when it became apparent to everyone in the town that they were no longer a force to be reckoned with. Just having one of the Hell-Hounds on the premises was a deterrent to cheats and petty criminals, so the bartenders and madames bore the expense of their indulgences willingly. The downhill slide had been slow but certain. The whores' conversation he had overheard served to confirm what he had suspected for some time ... that the Hell-Hounds had not only fallen from favor, they were actually held in contempt by the same low-life townspeople they had once sneered at. Once-proud soldiers were now a pack of pitiful barflies ... and this town had done it to them. Zalbar shook his head.

No. That wasn't right. His own personal downfall had been started by a specific action. It had started when he agreed to team up with Jubal in an effort to deal with Tempus. It had started with the death of ...

"Help me, Zalbar."

For once, Zalbar's nerves were under control. He didn't even look around.

"You're late," he said in a flat voice.

"Please! Help me!"

At this, Zalbar turned slowly to face his tormenter.

It was Razkuli. He was his best friend in the Hell-Hounds, or had been until Tempus killed him in revenge for Zalbar's part in the Jubal-Kurd nonsense. Actually, what confronted him was an apparition, a ghost if you will. After numerous encounters, Zalbar knew without looking that the figure before him didn't quite touch the floor as it walked or stood.

"Why do you keep doing this to me?" he demanded. "I thought you were my friend!"

"You are my friend," the form replied in a distant voice. "I have no one else to turn to. That's why you must help me!"

"Now look. We've been over this a hundred times," Zalbar said, trying to hold his temper. "I need my sleep. I can't have you popping up with your groanings every time I close my eyes. It was bad enough when you only showed up occasionally, but you're starting to drop in every night. Now either tell me how I can help you, something you've so far kept to yourself, or go away and leave me alone."