Steven Brust - Phoenix

As I remembered, and let myself be filled by the awe of the Easterner and the respect of the Dragaeren, it occurred to me that blood sacrifice may be carried out in more than one way. I took my dagger and sliced open my left palm, hardly noticing the pain. "Verra!" I cried. "Demon Goddess of my ancestors! I come to you!" I scattered droplets of blood through the window.

They vanished into the fog, which swirled and lightened, until in a few short moments it was a pure featureless white. This, too, seemed to shift, until I saw once more the hallway through which I had walked, following mist and a black cat. There were a few drops of blood on the floor.

I stood and stepped through the window. Same hallway, same confusion of distance and dimension due to the featureless white. This time there was no black cat to guide me, however. I wondered which way to go, and I wondered, too, if it mattered. There was no window behind me. Loiosh shifted on my shoulder and said, "That way feels right, boss." On reflection, it felt right to me, too, so I sheathed the dagger and began walking.

The mist never appeared, either, so perhaps that had been arranged for my benefit; the Demon Goddess seemed to me quite capable of theatrics. No mist, no cat, no sound, but the doors appeared much sooner than they had the last time. In a way, it would be oddest if that corridor really was just a corridor, of some fixed length, and it took however long to walk it depending on where one appeared.

This time, standing before the doors, I studied the carvings a bit. At first glance, they seemed to be abstract designs, yet as I looked I began to pick out or imagine shapes: trees, a mountain, a pair of wheels, what might have been a man with a hole in his chin, something else that might have been a fanciful four-legged beast with a tentacle where its nose ought to be and a pair of horns emerging from its mouth, perhaps an ocean below what I'd thought was a mountain but now seemed to be a stick supporting a circular blob.

I shook my head, looked again, and they were all abstract designs again. Who knows how much was there and how much I'd supplied?

For lack of anything else to do, I clapped at the doors and waited for one very, very long minute. I clapped once more and waited again. I still had my link to the Orb, and I thought of seeing if I could force or blow the doors open, but then I thought better of it.

"Good thinking, boss."

"Shut up, Loiosh. Do you have any great ideas?"

"Yes. Strike it with your fists, like Easterners are supposed to."

"And if there are defensive spells on it to destroy anyone who touches it?"

"Good point. There's always Spellbreaker."

I nodded. That was an idea. I stood there like an idiot a little longer, then sighed and let the gold chain fall into my left hand. I swung it around, then stopped. "Perhaps this isn't such a good idea."

"You have to do something, boss. If you're worried about protections, hit it with Spellbreaker. If not, either strike it or just see if it will push open. "

I considered for a while, then got mad at myself for standing there like an idiot. Before I could come to my senses, I whirled the chain around and lashed out at the door. It hit with a clank of metal against wood which instantly died out. There were no sensations, I felt no sorcery, and, fortunately, Spellbreaker left no mark on the door.

I pushed the right-hand door, and it creaked a bit but barely moved. However, when it swung back, there was a gap between the two doors sufficient for my fingers. I pulled the door, which was as heavy as it seemed, and it slowly opened enough for me to slip inside.

As I walked forward, I saw the shimmer and sparkle in the air that I'd seen before at Verra's appearance and disappearance. It occurred to me that perhaps that was how it would look to an observer when I stepped through to her realm.

In the time it took to form those thoughts, she had arrived. Her eyes followed me as I approached her throne, and when I got near, the cat, whom I hadn't noticed against the folds of her white gown, jumped down and inspected me. Loiosh tensed on my shoulder.

"There's something about that cat, boss. ..."

"That wouldn't surprise me a bit, Loiosh."

I stopped at a convenient distance before her throne and waited to see if she would speak first. Just when I was deciding that she wouldn't, she said, "You're getting blood on my floor."

I looked down. Yes, indeed, my palm was still bleeding, and the blood was running down Spellbreaker, which still hung from my left hand, and was slowly splattering onto the white tiles. I turned my palm over, and Spell-breaker came to life, as it has done every now and then; before, to hold itself upright, like a yendi about to strike. There was a tingling in my hand then that ran up my arm, and as I watched, the cut stopped bleeding and closed up, leaving a faint pink scar.

I hadn't known Spellbreaker could do that.

I carefully wrapped it around my left arm again and said, "Shall I scrub the floor for you?"

"Perhaps later."

I looked for traces of humor on her long, strange face, but didn't see any. I did, however, identify what made her face seem so odd: Her eyes were set too high. Not by much, you understand, but the bridge of her nose was ever so slightly lower on her forehead than on a human or a Dragaeran. The more I studied it, the stranger it seemed. I turned away from her.

"Why have you come here?" she said. Still looking away, I said, "To question you."

"Some might believe that presumptuous."

"Yeah, well, I'm just that kind of guy."

"Apparently. Ask, then."

I turned back to her. "Goddess, I asked before why you chose me to kill the King of Greenaere. Perhaps you answered me fully, perhaps not. Now I ask this: Why was it necessary that he die?"

Her eyes caught mine and held them, and I trembled in spite of myself. If she was trying to intimidate me, she succeeded. If she was trying to convince me to withdraw the question, she failed. At last she said, "For the good of the people in the Empire, both Dragaerans and Easterners."

"Bully," I said. "Can you be mere specific about that? So far, the results have been the death of the crew of a Dragaeran freighter and the arrest of several Easterners, including my wife."

"What?" she said, her eyebrows rising. I don't think I was really, truly frightened until then, until I realized that I had surprised her. That was when my stomach twisted itself into knots and my mouth went dry.

"The organization of which my wife is a member—"

"What of them? Were they all arrested?"

"The leaders, at least. This Kelly, my wife, several others."

"Why?"

How should I know? I suppose because they refused conscription, and—"

"Refused conscription? That fool. The whole point was—" She cut herself off abruptly.

"Was what?"

"It doesn't matter. I underestimated this man's arrogance."

"Well, that's just great," I said. "You underestimated—"

"Quiet," she said, snapping the word out like an arrow past my ear. "I must consider what to do to rectify my error."

"Just what were you trying to do, anyway?"

She stared at me. "I do not choose to tell you at this time."

I said, "It was all directed at Kelly's people in the first place, wasn't it?"

"Kelly, as I've said, is a fool."

"Maybe, but judging by what happened before, he knows what he's doing."

"Certainly he does, in a narrow field. He is a social scientist, if you will, and a very skilled one in certain ways. He studied—it doesn't matter."

"Tell me." I don't know what got into me that caused me to start interrogating her like a button-man who'd been sloughing off, but I did it.

Her mouth twitched. "Very well. During the Interregnum, when your people—Easterners—roamed over the Empire like jhereg on a dragon's corpse—"