“I…wasn’t sure. What does the sword have to do with it?”
“The sword,” Cath repeated. “More accurately, the hilt. It’s made of my blood, as are the leash and…well, that’s not important to you. What matters is that the only way a living person can enter the Underworld is by possessing one of those objects. I admit I cheated to bring you here. You should have come under your own power, but you were close to the door, you were nearly dead, and I thought, who’s going to argue with me? Well, my sister might, but she has her own preoccupations.”
“I apologize for the state of the sword. The Witch must have shattered it when she cast frigo.”
“Don’t worry about it. The blade can be re-forged. No, don’t offer it to me, I can’t touch it or there really would be hell to pay.” Cath withdrew his hand when Piercy held the hilt out to him. “Foolish of me to have made those things, but I was young and this world was new and I thought…well, never mind about that. It’s risky, letting them free in the living world, but far riskier to keep them close to me. But there are more important things to deal with.”
“The Witch. My Lord, why did you allow her to leave?”
“I had no choice,” Cath said grimly. “I couldn’t touch the leash, which protected Dalessa, and mortals can’t die here, so I couldn’t exert any power over Atheron. I thought that idiot Alvor had obeyed my command to take the leash to safety, but his solution was obviously impermanent. And then he had to spread the story to every traveling bard looking to make a name for herself. At least no one knew the sword was anything but a very elegant weapon.”
“Is the Witch capable of cracking open the Underworld?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can stop her.”
Cath looked off into the distance. “I can. It would be at a tremendous cost. I can lock the gates against her magic, but that will lock them…not permanently, but for a long time. People will die and have nowhere to go. The living world will become populated with the dead, who will go insane under the load of their debt. It would be catastrophic beyond measure.”
“What happens if she succeeds?”
“I imagine Dalessa believes her spell will be permanent, which it won’t be. Spirits will escape into the living world before I can counter her spell, though, and the result will be the same, but on a smaller scale. Tradeoffs, Piercy. I have to choose between two evils. And there’s more at stake than the world.”
“I don’t understand. Surely protecting the world is the most important thing.”
Cath turned his gaze on Piercy. He still wore the same bland face, but those eyes belonged to nothing human. “It’s not something I expect a mortal to understand. Dalessa had a lot of debt to work off, some of it not her fault, but the law is the law. A thousand years brought her to a point where she was nearly able to shed her madness and truly advance. I had so much joy in her…but again, that’s not something you’d understand. She can open the door for a time, and then it will close again, and everything will be as it was except for the devastation the living world will endure. But if she succeeds, she will damn herself utterly, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
Piercy had to look away from Cath’s face, which showed such unbearable sorrow he felt uncomfortable witnessing it, as if he’d seen the God naked. “But if she intends to do it, does not that damn her already?”
“The law is the law, Piercy, and I won’t explain it to you,” Cath said, “but the law judges actions first and intentions after. I know you have sometimes thought of doing harm to people you encounter, but you’ve rarely acted on those thoughts, and the law won’t hold you culpable for the ones you overcame. Dalessa still has a chance.”
“You are correct, I don’t understand,” Piercy said angrily. “You would devastate the living world for the sake of one spirit? One who has already caused so many horrors?”
“You’re my children, Piercy, every one of you,” Cath said. He put his hand over Piercy’s and squeezed it gently. “You think it doesn’t hurt every time one of you disappears into the Maelstrom? You all start out with such hope, and then Belia watches over you, but she cares more for the law than she does for you, so she’s—but I’m not going to criticize my sister just because she and I think differently. No, Piercy, I’m not going to stop Dalessa. You are.”
“I beg your pardon?” Piercy pulled away from the God’s grip. “I may not be dead, but I am certainly in no position to fight a mad Witch. I have no magic and, thanks to her frigo, I no longer have a weapon. And while I am willing to attack her armed with nothing but these two hands, I question whether such an attack would truly be effective.”
“You came armed with more than one weapon,” Cath said, pointing. The hawk-headed walking stick stood propped against the arm of the chair, the silver head gleaming in the sunlight.
“My Lord, I doubt that stick is sufficiently powerful to achieve the Witch’s death. Which I presume is your intention.”
“You presume correctly. I want you to kill Dalessa and free her spirit to return here. With luck, she won’t have much ground to regain on her road to Paradise.”
Piercy closed his eyes. “My Lord,” he said, “you realize I hold you in the highest esteem and would not for the world disrespect you, but I am forced to conclude you are out of your mind.”
“Piercy, you’re one of a kind,” Cath said, laughing. “Did you ever wonder why the sword responded to you so well? You’ve been my servant for years and never known it.”
A chill ran through him. “That is not as comforting as you seem to think.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not as if I’ve been manipulating you. Some people by their natures forward my intentions for the world. Or Belia’s, though her servants tend to be more obvious. Something for you to think about. What matters is that I could make use of anyone, but it gives me pleasure to ask this of you.”
“You’re asking, then?”
“Of course.”
“But it is hardly something I can say no to.”
“That you cannot say no to. It’s who you are. It’s why I love you.”
Piercy flushed. “I…thank you.”
“Then, will you do it?”
The hawk head of the walking stick was cool under his fingers. “I will. But I have a condition.”
“I can’t bring Ayane back to life. That would warp the law.”
“Alvor saved Carall.”
“Alvor had the leash. You don’t.”
“I have this.” Piercy brandished the hilt at the God. “It must have some of the same properties.”
“The sword was made to dispense justice, not to bind souls.”
“Then let the sword judge. Give me the chance to rescue her. If it’s justice that she be returned to life, the sword can make that happen. If not…my Lord, I only want the same chance Alvor had.”
“You lack everything he used to retrieve his friend. Piercy, this is not a simple task. You could be lost in the Underworld. Your body would gradually decay around your spirit, which would be driven mad by the process. You would likely become so corrupt you would be captured by the Maelstrom, never to return. Is this really something you want to do for the sake of a woman who’s rejected you?”
Piercy gripped the hawk head more tightly. “I love her,” he said, “and even if she will not spend her life with me, I want her to have that life to live as she chooses.”
Cath regarded him dispassionately. “You will have to find her,” he said. “I can’t send you to her. But the sword will lead you back to the living world. You’re my weapon, Piercy, and I can’t afford to lose you. Swear you will return to the living world when you know your quest is hopeless.”
“It’s not hopeless.”
“Swear it, Piercy.”
“…I swear.”
“Let me see the stick, now.” Piercy handed it to him, and the God took it by the shaft and sighted along it as if it were a rifle. “You’ve used this as a weapon before.”
“I have
, but never to kill.”
“I know.” Cath reversed it and held the hawk head level with his nose. He looked almost cross-eyed, which struck Piercy as the most ludicrous aspect of this whole encounter. Then Cath rubbed the silver of the stick’s head, blew on it, and handed it back to Piercy. “When this is over, take the hilt to the priests in Belicath; they’ll know what to do with it. But this stick is now your weapon. Strike once, and it will drive Dalessa out of her captured body and return her to my domain.”
“What of the leash? Will it not keep her attached to her body?”
“What I’ve done to the stick will overcome any magic—once. It will discharge its power on the first person, or thing, you hit from this moment on. Striking her will break the connection the leash has made with her body and it will have no power to bind her spirit. But if you strike anything else, it becomes an ordinary stick again and you’ll have to kill Dalessa the old-fashioned way. Including getting the leash away from her.” Cath leaned forward. “But whatever you do, don’t let the stick touch the leash.”
“What will happen if it does?”
“Let’s just say you won’t be around to find out.”
Piercy examined his walking stick. It didn’t look any different than before. “Does it matter where I strike her?”
“A solid blow will do. It’s not enough to let it graze her fingers, if that’s what you’re asking.” Cath stood and straightened his trousers. “Any other questions?”
“They are all the sort of question I am certain you will not answer, for my own good.”
“You’re a wise man, Piercy. Now, walk toward the waterfall—yes, directly into the lake. Have faith, Piercy. I haven’t brought you all this way to let you drown.” He vanished. So did the armchairs. Piercy was left facing the great blue eye of the lake and the foaming spray of the waterfall.
He let out a slow breath and tried to make his shoulders relax. He’d spoken to a God. He’d been disrespectful to a God. Two weeks ago he’d been nothing more than a town dandy and secret spy for the Foreign Office, and now…well, this was definitely not the way he’d ever imagined his life going. He rolled his shoulders a final time and walked into the lake.
It was cold. His toes went numb, and the feeling spread upward over his calves and knees and thighs. He raised his arms high to keep the hilt and the stick out of the water, but it kept rising, and when it reached his chest he realized it was pointless. The hilt kept his left hand warm, but the rest of him was as frozen as a wintry statue. Shortly he had his chin tilted high to keep his face out of the water. He kicked off the bottom to swim the rest of the way and found one of his feet was attached to the lake bed at all times, only releasing him to take another step. He drew in a deep breath and submerged entirely.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Instantly he was elsewhere, completely dry but shivering. Then he wondered if he’d moved at all, because he was once again surrounded by grass speckled with wildflowers growing red and yellow and pale blue. The lake and the cliff with the waterfall were gone, as were the distant mountains. A cool breeze brushed his face, bringing with it the unexpected scent of bitter ash. There was no road, not even a path an animal might have made, just green grass and sky like clear blue glass, unmarked by clouds.
Scattered across the vast meadow were robed statues, gray and still and carved with such detail they might have been people coated in stone dust. Piercy went to the nearest and examined it more closely. The woman’s eyes were open, blank and sightless as statues’ eyes usually were, but as he looked at her face, her eyes closed, then opened, too slowly to be called a blink.
Piercy took a step back in astonishment. “Madam, can you see me?” he said, waving his hand in front of her face. No reaction. He realized she was breathing as slowly as she’d closed her eyes, and he put his hand on her shoulder, then jerked it away as it passed through her form completely, stirring her robe as if casting up a spray of dust. It swirled, then settled back into place.
“Madam!” Piercy shouted, waving both hands this time but reluctant to touch her again. She closed her eyes again, completely ignoring him. Piercy stepped back farther. If she was representative of the inhabitants of what he was forced to conclude were the Pleasant Fields, he couldn’t look to them for guidance.
He moved on, trying to rouse each spirit he came to with no more success. The fourth one he saw was moving in a graceful but incomprehensible dance, but didn’t respond to Piercy’s shouts and gestures any more than the first three had. He looked around and saw other figures, not many, who were also dancing, all of them absorbed in their own unique movements. They gave off little puffs of stone dust as they bent and turned and lifted their arms.
Piercy stopped to watch one whose dance involved alternating circles with some kind of pushing motion. It was familiar, and yet he couldn’t remember ever dancing anything like it. But then, how likely was it the Underworld would reflect the customs of one small country in one small moment in time? He followed the man’s movements: hands nearly clasping, wrists twisting, then both hands pushing forward as if moving a cart, or rolling—
That was it. The man was going through the motions of rolling out dough. Making a ball, rolling it flat, patting it into the shape of a loaf, putting it in an oven, then starting over. Piercy ran to the next moving figure. This one was writing a letter. The next was…Piercy wasn’t sure about it, but he thought the man might be climbing a ladder to build a roof.
What had the ascetic at the Yanceter Monastery said about the Pleasant Fields? He’d said the souls there were caught in the acts of daily life, and the ascetics performed those rituals to help them see the need to move beyond worldly cares. It didn’t explain why so many of the spirits were motionless, and it didn’t give Piercy any idea of how to find Ayane, but it solved one mystery.
He stopped in front of a pair of motionless spirits and organized his thoughts. Cath had sent him to the Pleasant Fields because Ayane was here somewhere. Alvor had found Carall in a black hall, which this definitely wasn’t, so Kerensa’s story was useless to him—except Cath had said Piercy lacked Alvor’s items of power, implying they would have been of use to him. Which meant this wasn’t impossible. There had to be some quality of this place Piercy could use to find Ayane, or Cath wouldn’t have let him try. He just had to figure out what it was.
The spirits he faced now looked almost the same. They even blinked in tandem. Piercy blinked himself and rubbed his eyes. They didn’t just look the same; they were identical. Twins. Piercy walked a wide circle around them both. Twin brothers, and both in the Pleasant Fields, right next to one another. What were the odds of that?
On a whim, he took a wider path and looked at the next closest spirit. This one was moving, though her motions weren’t large or defined enough for Piercy to be able to tell what she was doing. He looked at her face, then went back to the twins. There was a definite resemblance between the three: mother and sons? Sister and brothers? Or even an aunt? He made a mental note of her position and kept moving, looking at all the spirits surrounding the twins. This was definitely a family, an extended family, and as he moved outward the resemblances changed as this family spread into another, and then another.
He returned to the woman and watched her for a while, trying to work out what she was doing. So. The pattern was complex, but it seemed spirits were drawn to members of their biological families. That could be useful, if he had any idea where Ayane’s family was, but then if he knew that, he’d know where she was and wouldn’t need that piece of information. If he could even find a Santerran…even the ones whose Libekan ancestors had intermarried with Santerran natives had a link to the conquerors, and Ayane’s family was as pure-blooded as they came. But he had no idea which direction to take, and if he chose wrong, his path might take him away from Ayane permanently.
The smell of ash came to his nose again, and he looked for a trace of smoke but saw nothing except blue sky. He made a decision and headed off in the direction the
smell came from. He would walk for a few minutes, then take a different heading, and pray Cath might have mercy on him.
Faces passed, still and lifeless. More men and women carrying out their endless dances. The smell of ash grew stronger, though Piercy still couldn’t see what was causing it. He saw no Santerrans anywhere. You might have sent me somewhere close to her, he thought irritably, but of course Cath wouldn’t cheat. The law is the law, he’d said. Probably helping Piercy find his dearest love would have dire consequences for the world, not that he could imagine he was all that important. Then he remembered the stick, and wondered if maybe he was wrong about that.
He tripped, twisted to avoid landing on the stick—who knew if that would constitute using the weapon?—and ended up on his back staring up at the glassy blue sky. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, then coughed and sneezed on the bitter ash filling his nostrils. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder where he’d landed on it, he got to his feet and saw a thin trail of smoke coming from the ground nearby.
He crouched and brushed aside the long grass. A giant coal dusted with white ash lay there, cracked in half, with a plume of gray smoke issuing from the crack. It rose into the air some three feet, then flowed off into the distance in a coherent line. Piercy brushed his fingers through it, but the breeze he made didn’t disturb the smoke at all.
He stood and watched the smoke disappear. It looked like a strand of thread unspooling along an invisible path, straight and undeviating. He started to prod the coal with his toe, but stopped himself before touching it. Maybe Cath was cheating, after all. Or maybe this was just a normal part of the Pleasant Fields, and he was grasping at any form of guidance. Either way, he wasn’t going to give up what might be his only advantage. He set off after the thread.
The line of smoke didn’t dissipate, though it no longer smelled of ash, but of apples, and Piercy was strongly reminded of his grandmother’s cook baking tartlets when he was a child and pretending not to notice when he stole them. He felt invigorated, purposeful, and after only a few strides, he was running, letting the trail unwind before him. It tangled like thread now, as if some invisible kitten were playing in it, though it never changed course or tied itself into knots. He carefully didn’t touch it, just ran beside it, passing statue after statue without stopping to examine them. A part of him whispered You are becoming very lost, but he felt so lighthearted he ignored it.
The God-Touched Man Page 30
