Piers Anthony - On a Pale Horse

Zane grew angry about that. Was Satan to win the celestial war because he cheated while God did not? Yet if God could only counter Satan by cheating Himself, He would become evil, and evil would still prevail. God had to be incorruptible! Therefore — there would be no action from God.

Zane wrapped up his schedule and went to call on Luna.

She had not been using her relief stones. The knowledge of death and damnation was taking its grim toll; her face was pale, and the lines on it were etched more deeply. Her tresses hung in lank masses. Her eyes were heavily shadowed. She wore no makeup; that would have been pointless, for she had evidently been crying considerably.

Zane's breast experienced a soft explosion of love for her. He took her into his embrace and held her close, wanting to reassure her yet knowing there was nothing he could offer except his own pain.

He kissed her, but she held back. "We must not," she said, knowing where this was leading.

"Not?"

"The stones say no."

He hardly cared about the will of the stones, but he did not want to oppose her own will in any way. "Then let me hold your hand."

In response she hummed a little tune.

Zane's brow furrowed. "Am I missing something?"

She smiled fleetingly, and a bit of her beauty showed. "A folk song. I'm sorry; I'm distracted, and didn't realize I was doing it aloud. I'm in poor shape, because the stones don't abolish grief, they only postpone it, so I have to suffer it all sometime; in any event, I do want to experience natural emotion for my father, and for myself."

"What folk song?"

She made an "I'll show you" sign, then moved to the center of the room and posed. She sang: "It looms so long, I'll miss you, miss; I've got to take your hand… I've got to dance with you… We all will dance with you. Oh."

He might never see her again, because she would be dead. A catchy tune, but a macabre mental connection for hand-holding. She certainly was upset, and he could not alleviate her distress.

"It looms so long, I'll miss you, miss, Luna sang again. So let me spin and turn." And she spun prettily, her skirt flaring. But the image that came to Zane's mind was that of the left-footed girl, prisoned in the magic slippers. There was no joy in Luna's dance, however lovely it made her.

He walked toward her, still uncertain what to do. She sang the first line again, then continued: "We all shall spin and turn." This time Zane turned with her, joining her dance.

Then he caught her hand and led her to the couch.

They sat for the better part of an hour in silence, holding hands, and in that time the burgeoning love he felt for her suffused every crevice of his awareness. The girl the Love stone had directed him to had been a dream; Luna was reality. How could he live without her? "I will go with you," he said suddenly.

Luna smiled wanly. "Few would make that offer, and I thank you for it. But you will not be going to Hell!"

"Surely I will, because I have been breaking the rules of my office!"

"You have been breaking them in good ways. But even if you do die soon and go to Hell, Satan would not let us be together there, any more than he would let me see my father. Hell is for suffering."

"Your father is not in Hell. He is in Purgatory, working out his account."

"But has he any chance at Heaven?"

"Of course he has! He's a good man!"

She smiled. "You are kind to say so."

In due course he left her, more than ever determined to save her, more than ever uncertain how to do it. He was only Death, a functionary; he could not dictate the identity of his clients — and Luna was not his client. Not directly.

But, damn it, Satan was cheating! It wasn't right! Was there no justice in Eternity? Some court of appeal, to set the record straight — There had to be! Zane turned off his timer. Mortis leaped for Purgatory without directive, knowing the will of his master.

"Why, yes. Death, you may file a petition," the Purgatory Administration annex desk girl said. "It will be reviewed by the Immortal Board at the next meeting, and a committee assigned —

"When's the next meeting?"

She checked her perpetual calendar. "In ten Earthly days."

"But the wrong is in process now!" he protested. "Ten days may be too late!"

"I don't make the rules," she said, with just that edge of irritability that public servants knew, from millennia of experience, that they could get away with.

Zane sighed. Bureaucracy was the same everywhere! He filled out the form and left it. Maybe there would be time. Luna's death had been omened within a month, of which five days were now gone; it could happen any time within the next twenty-five. That gave him ten out of twenty-five chances to lose, and fifteen out of twenty-five to win, or odds in his favor by a three or two margin. But he distrusted that, fearing what Satan would do.

Zane slept at his Death house, accepting the routine services of his staff without noticing, then got to work early next day. Since it seemed he couldn't do anything to help Luna before the petition was considered, he tried to put the matter from his mind by working harder.

As luck would have it, his case load was small at the moment. He took two clients in rapid order, then found himself with the maximum time of thirty minutes for the third. It seemed pointless to go early, but he had to distract himself some way, so he oriented and rode the Death horse to the address.

This was an isolated spot in the western state of Nevada, the least populated region of the United States, because it was the least habitable. Zane's gems guided him to one of the desert areas, a barren wasteland.

This was dragon country. The scenic Hot Smoke Mountains — renamed in honor of the beasts — were riddled with the warrens of the fierce reptiles. Few plants survived, but that hardly mattered to the dragons, who were carnivorous, preying on tender virgins. Mostly the creatures ranged aloft, questing for virginal animals, but they had a gourmet appetite for the rare human variety when it could be obtained. In fact — In fact, he now remembered that this was the locale of the Dragoons, a cult dedicated to the welfare of this exotic species. The Dragoons had lobbied vigorously to prevent the construction of resorts, irrigated farm sites, and missile silos in the region, pleading that the Hot Smoke species of dragon had no other habitat and would, if not left free, suffer the extinction that had almost claimed them before their discovery. Fortunately, that discovery had been made by a man interested in rare life forms, who had used some elementary magic to track them down. Had the original trappers and settlers in this region discovered them, they would have been totally exterminated, and no one would have believed they had ever existed.

The Dragoons had won several legal suits, for the general public was in a phase of environmental consciousness, so the Hot Smokers remained largely unmolested. But they still needed to eat, and virgins of any type were in short supply. The Dragoons were constantly looking for new sacrifices. Human sacrifices were generally illegal, but it was difficult to keep constant watch, and the state authorities were chronically short of personnel.

Sure enough, as Zane arrived at the site for his client, he spied a lovely but terrified young woman, barely nubile, in a cage. It was afternoon here, and men were setting up a smudge pot, evidently planning to use the smoke to summon a dragon. How the Dragoons had captured this virgin, Zane did not know, but she was surely doomed. He would have to collect her soul as the dragon consumed her, twenty five minutes hence, unless he figured out a way to rescue her.

He walked to the cage and spoke to the girl. "How did they bring you here?" he inquired, suspecting that she would turn out to have been drugged.