by Holly Lisle
Heaven could hold within it no place like this, she decided, so this could not be Heaven. There might be a Heaven, full of angels and harps and hosannas, but this was not it. Lacking any inhabitants, this would not even be a true part of the afterlife, would it?
She turned slowly, fighting through her panicked need to find Jake just to think. She could have handled her encounter with the…what?…the Administrator?…better. She shouldn't have acted out of rage, nor responded with force. As she thought back on it, though, she realized she was supposed to have been intimidated. The Administrator was supposed to have been frightening, but bureaucrats had always made her angry, not afraid.
Nevertheless, she'd been…Well, face the facts. She'd been wrong. Lauren wasn't good at being wrong; neither was she good at admitting mistakes. Now she faced what could be the biggest mistake she'd ever made.
Temper—she had one. Usually she kept it in check. This was a hell of a time to get trigger-happy.
The road didn't stop at her feet anymore. Now it led both forward and back, with—of course—no sign to tell her which way was which. She had the feeling that if she followed it in either direction, it would lead her on forever. She could not answer her riddle with a road. Nor with her temper and a bazooka—though for the life of her she couldn't recall wanting a bazooka, or thinking of one.
The road was not the answer, but pacing helped her think. So, because she figured neither forward nor back meant anything, she chose a direction at random and started walking.
This quest had seemed possible when she'd been in Copper House in Oria. Make a gate, follow Jake, bring him back with her. Get Brian, get Molly, go home. It wasn't "how things are done"—but it was the way she wanted to do them, and she didn't see any reason why she shouldn't. She hadn't expected Administration.
Perhaps she should have.
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice echoed in her mind, offering tantalizing hints about how she should have acted. Like Lauren, Orpheus had charged into the afterlife to rescue someone. Granted, he was half a god, and had a magic harp and a voice that could sing birds out of the trees, but he'd still had to go to the afterlife. He'd ended up crossing the River Styx with Charon and presenting himself to Pluto and Proserpine, where he'd pleaded his case in song.
Say Orpheus had actually been a gateweaver. He could have been influenced by the beliefs of his time to see this place as the Greek underworld. If he'd expected to see Charon and the River Styx, Cerberus guarding the gates, and ghosts weeping at his sad song of loss, this place would have accommodated him.
Having now met old gods and having seen magic, and having at least a bit of an inside look at the sources of both, Lauren was inclined to mine for truth anywhere she might find it. Orpheus's journey might fit in with hers more than she had at first imagined. In which case, the Administrator would be Pluto, in a guise designed to make sense to Lauren. He would also be Anubis, and later Osiris, and Zalmoxis, and others that her thin familiarity with comparative religions didn't offer up. One thing she could remember from these was that the gods did not give back the souls they had gathered in lightly, and even when they did agree to let someone go, something always happened to prevent the soul from leaving. Eurydice would have made it, except Orpheus had looked back on her. Proserpine, even though she had been living, had eaten the pomegranate seeds, and so had to spend half her time in the underworld.
God, Jake—don't eat anything while you're here.
Lauren couldn't allow herself to fail. She could not lose her little boy. Jake needed his father and her. And she would do anything to get Brian back. And what about Molly? Molly was going to fight for the salvation and resurrection of a universe; surely she deserved to have a soul while she did so—to be spared the horrors of slowly losing herself.
Lauren had to find the Administrator again. She had to present her case—this time calmly. She had to tell him why she wanted her son back, and why she wanted Brian back. And she had to win back Molly's soul as well; after all, how could Molly be asked to give everything of herself and get nothing in return? What sort of universe, what sort of god or gods could demand that of her?
How, then, did Lauren get the attention of the Administrator again, so that she could win him over to her cause?
He had patience, he had said. And intended that she have patience, too—only she didn't have time for patience. She didn't have time for anything but to get in, get Jake and Brian and Molly, and get out.
She had the means to fight for the lives of the people she loved; she had to take up arms.
If not bazookas.
She stared around her. Nothing different. Until she got to the Administrator, nothing would be different. So she had to get to the Administrator. But how?
He spoke directly into her thoughts, but didn't choose to answer them. He'd responded when she altered the terrain, but she didn't think that she'd made a friend of him while changing things around. He had not utterly forsaken her, though—he'd said that he had patience. Which seemed to imply that if she could just figure out how to reach him, he would be willing to work with her.
He wasn't giving her any clues, though. No big neon signs saying, "GO HERE" or "Step One: Make a tunnel. Step Two: Pay the guy at the river."
Lauren suspected this place would make more sense to someone who had expectations about what he would find in it. She could have used a firmly held belief in an opinionated religion right about then.
She turned, slowly, squinting against the horrid gray for some indication that something had changed. Nothing had. Her feet were on the road she'd made, but the road went nowhere, and time was passing—might, back home, even be racing. What if she returned to find that weeks or months had passed? Or years? What if she got back to find her world already gone—a blackened cinder?
"What do you want me to do?" she muttered.
"Absolutely nothing," said the voice of the Administrator in her ear. "You want something from me, not the other way around."
"I know I want something from you. What do I have to do to get it?"
"You can't have what you want. You have to change what you want."
"What do I have to change it to?"
"You have to want to go home."
Lauren looked around her, wishing she could see the Administrator in his damned flapping black robes. She wished she could throttle him.
"I want to go home. I want to take Jake and Brian and Molly with me."
"Concentrate on wanting to go home. I might let you do that."
Lauren said, "Let me? I have a son here who doesn't belong here any more than I do. My son's father is here—he was stolen away from us too soon. My sister's soul is here—and she is back on Oria fighting to save worlds, and she needs me. Staying here isn't an option."
"Yes. It is."
Lauren felt the rage flood over her again, but this time she held it close and banked it like embers stored against the need for fire. "You're the Administrator here. You can help me if you want to."
"Your mind perceives me as the Administrator. That's what resonates with you. What I am capable of doing, however, has little in common with your expectations, which are, I assure you, just as hidebound in their own way as those of Orpheus. Yes, he was real. Yes, he came here. No, the story didn't play out quite the way it does in the mythology."
Lauren said, "Could you please come here to talk to me? I'm getting tired of speaking to thin air."
"I don't doubt that you are. Do you intend any more silly stunts?"
"I don't. I didn't intend that one—I can't even imagine how I ended up holding a bazooka."
The Administrator chuckled. "Oh, I gave you that. I wanted to have a little fun."
An instant later, he appeared in front of Lauren, and she could only think it was a good thing she wasn't holding the bazooka. Again he wore flowing black robes, and again they swirled and lifted and whipped, clawed at by a wind that didn't touch Lauren. A deep hood occluded his face, and she realized that with a scyth
e, he would look like the personification of Death.
"I play him sometimes," the Administrator said. "He's what some people expect to meet somewhere along the way. We aim to be accommodating."
"You haven't been accommodating at all," Lauren protested.
"You aren't dead," he said.
Lauren clenched her jaw. "Excuse the hell out of me. Neither is my son."
"You aren't supposed to come here if you're not dead. If you had a more amenable belief structure, Cerberus would have met you at the gate with teeth bared, and you would have gotten the idea and gone home. You. Don't. Belong. Here."
"I know I don't belong here. I don't want to be here. But I'm not leaving without my son. And Brian is here, and I need him back. And my sister Molly is here, too."
"Sort of an afterthought, is she?"
Lauren flushed. "No. But just before I came here she told me she lost her soul and asked me to bring it back, and I'm having trouble adjusting to the idea."
"Wait. Your sister spoke to you before you came here?"
"Yes."
"Then you don't need her back."
"I need her soul. She doesn't have it anymore."
This seemed to set the Administrator aback.
"Either your sister is alive and has her soul with her, or else she's dead and her soul is here. There are no instances where a person is one place but her soul is someplace else."
"And yet my sister is on Oria, and her soul is here. Imagine that."
The Administrator tipped his head beneath the cowl and Lauren got the feeling that he was staring at her very hard. "You are not the most pleasant person," he said.
"I'm having a bad day."
"Think about your sister Molly for a moment, would you? Picture her in your mind, recall shared moments, things that you have done together."
Lauren really only had one from before Molly's death, so she thought about the final fight between the Sentinels and the traitors, and recalled how Molly had taken Jake and run for the gate. About how she'd failed to get through it fast enough to save both of them. How she'd given up her own life to save his.
"Got her," the Administrator said. "Yes, her soul is here. So the person claiming to be your sister in Oria is not."
Lauren said, "It's a long story. She died saving my son's life—"
"The son who is now here?"
"Yes."
"Ah. So she did. I see from her records that her soul moved forward a great deal that day."
"Let me finish. The necklace she was wearing when she died did some sort of magic that brought her body back. She's alive again, in Oria, and she and I have to stop the destruction of our worldchain. But she's doing so much for our world and all of our upworlds, and she's going to lose more of herself every time she dies. It isn't right that she should do so much and then have nothing in return—and if she has no soul, she'll lose everything. Her memory, her love, her hope, who she is…."
"And you want me to do…what?"
"Let me take her soul back to her."
"You want me to let you take a resting soul and send it back to a world to be put into some sort of ragtag, thrown-together-by-amateurs body?"
"Well…yes."
"We don't do that."
"I didn't think you did on a regular basis. I'm not asking for you to do what you usually do. I'm asking for you to give me my son back, and to make a couple of small exceptions."
"Your son found his way here through the link that he shares with his father. There was some…irregularity in his case. They are together, and Brian's spirit is now in one place—if in two bodies. In your case, no such irregularity exists. As far as you need be concerned, your son is dead. You, however, are all in one piece inhabiting a living body, and you can either go home, or you can wait out the rest of your mortal existence right here on the plains. I do not think you would enjoy the latter option."
"I. Want. My. Son."
"I can't give him to you. I can't give any of them to you."
"Who can?"
"You need to talk to them."
Lauren stared at him. "I can do that?"
"No. If they wanted to talk to you, they would already be here."
"I want to go to them."
"All souls are autonomous. You think we run a prison here? As the soul who takes care of difficult situations, however, I can tell you right now that you'll be happier if you don't speak to them, but just turn around and go home. It is within my power to mark a path for you so that you won't get lost."
Controlling the blinding rage that threatened to swallow her, Lauren kept her voice quiet and said, "I want to talk to them"
Sadly, the Administrator nodded. "They always do."
Copper House
"Is it true?" Molly asked.
Seolar didn't bother pretending. "Yes. When I gave you the necklace, I wasn't in love with you. But—yes. I knew what it would do."
"When you fell in love with me, why didn't you take it back?"
He turned away from her.
"You could have, couldn't you? The action wasn't irreversible when we rode on our picnic, when we stayed at Graywinds during the snowstorm, when the traitors brought the Sentinels here, when I went to join my sister. At any time, you could have taken the necklace back."
"I could have," he said, still not facing her. "And had I done that, my people would have died."
"So it was me or them."
"There's more to it than that. I thought I could protect you. I thought I could keep you safe here in Copper House, or protected by guards while you were out. I was certain that for my lifetime, at least, you would be safe—unharmed."
Molly's rage tore far beyond the reach of mere words, but still she kept it in check. "Then the night I came back here and found you dressed in black, the whole of Copper House draped in black, and you so clearly in mourning—you knew I'd be coming back. You weren't mourning the fact that you'd never see me again, but only the fact that the 'real' me was gone."
Now, at last, he turned to face her. "No," he said. "I thought I'd lost you forever. You didn't die here, in this world. You died in your own world, and you were the first Vodi ever to do so. I had every reason to believe that the necklace would not permit you to re-create yourself in your world, and no reason to think that it would let you come back here. When I mourned, I mourned for real."
"But you didn't mourn for Molly. You mourned for the Vodi who would have saved the veyâr from the depredations of the rrôn."
His eyes narrowed and he stiffened. "I mourned for you. For the woman I loved and thought I would have at my side for my whole life. I mourned for you. Yes, I mourned for my people, too. Should I not? I'd spent the whole of my life sending out agents to search for you, praying all the while that we would be able to find the promised Vodi before it was too late. I prayed, I put every resource of Copper House into the search. I made enemies of allies because I would not arm and engage battalions in their defense; anyone I sent to help others I had to take away from my obsessed search for you." He walked across the great room they shared to the bookshelves and ran a finger across the spines. "I'd read all of these. I knew what might happen. I thought I was prepared; I thought I could prevent it from happening, and that only when you died of a natural old age would you return as…what you are now."
"A soulless freak. Some magically animated monstrosity. You figured by then you would be old or dead anyway, so what was the harm?"
He turned on her now, and she could see anger in his face. "You were in the military. You understand duty—that sometimes duty comes before life, before love, before personal ambition, before all else. I have a duty to my people, and finding you, and making sure that you received the necklace and took on the mantle of the Vodi was my duty. Had I not done it, I would have betrayed everything I have lived my life for."
"Duty," she spat.
"Duty. You took yours on voluntarily, and left it when you grew weary of it. I was born into mine and will not be free of it until
I die. If, knowing what I know now—knowing everything that had happened—I had to make the same choices, I would. Because my people's lives are in my hands, and any love I might feel, and any dreams I might harbor for myself, are and always will be secondary to that."
Molly laughed—a shocked, disbelieving laugh, and said, "I might have left the US Air Force behind, but I, too, was born to a weight of duty, and my life was never my own, either. When I swallowed the deaths of strangers, I didn't do that because it was fun, or because it made me happy. I did it because it was my duty." She glared at him. "But without the Vodi necklace, maybe I could have done what I had to do for your people and your world—and beyond that, for the worldchain—without drawing the attention of every murderous, life-devouring dark god up and down the worlds. Maybe I wouldn't have had to see a child blown to shreds by the fucking rrôn; maybe I wouldn't have had to sacrifice my own life to save his. Maybe you and I would have had some sort of normal life together, instead of spending our time cowering beneath the circling horrors overhead right now. And—yes—they are still there."
