Robert Asprin: Storm Season

He was forced to slow. A man-shape stood there waiting, a god in armor and helm beaked in imitation of a bird of prey, shield up and ready, sword a dark silver of death ready in his fist. Shield took blow and shield took blow, but its bottom edge was banged in to impact Hanse's body at the waist so that he groaned and half-doubled and staggered back, trying not to fall, but falling, sprawling backward, a grounded target ready for the death-stroke of a god he never should have fought. His elbow banged into a snake-shape of ochreous rock and the sword leaped from it as if eager to flee.

Hanse had the ridiculous thought I knew I should never have done this as he tried to writhe and wriggle and watched death rushing at him with upraised sword. Mignureal saved him, leaping in from the side with a screech. Hanse, flailing and groaning, trying to will himself onto his feet and yet despairing utterly, saw the vicious black-bladed stroke that cut her nearly in two almost precisely at the waist.

Now it was a god's turn to show his teeth in feral smile worthy of the lowest beast, and after spinning completely around from the exertion of destroying that poor pale-clad body, he came bounding again, sword rising for the second death blow in seconds, and the absolutely desperate Hanse reverted: he thrust his left hand up his tunic sleeve, half-rolling as he did to free his arm all the way, and hurled the long flat knife.

He watched its rush as he had never tracked a cast before, none of his thousands and thousands of practice casts. The leaf of shining metal seemed to take minutes, floating through eternity to reach the rushing oncoming god who, though racing toward Hanse, took as long to near. Lightning sundered the sky and thunder followed, but it was the voice of enraged, triumphant Vashanka, at the charge.

"I CANNOT BE SLAIN BY WEAPONS OF YOUR PLANE, IDIOT, LITTLE THIEF, POOR DEMI MORTAL, INCONSEQUENTIAL INSEC-"

And then his charge met the knife's. The knife struck, beautifully and perfectly point-first, just under the adam's apple. Vashanka shrieked and the shriek burbled. That impossible plane of infinity came alive with blinding and coruscating light.

... down in Sanctuary those up at dawn saw the late-rising moon vanish as the sky was hurled alight by heat lightning bright as day...

that surrounded Vashanka utterly, that was Vashanka, as his bellow of rage and pain was thunder and lightning. Pierced, he went flying backward as if by smashing impact, and the wind of his passage was as the gale of a storm booming in off the sea. And on he went, until he was so distant to the staring, squinting Hanse that he was tiny, and then that tiny Vashanka vanished.

Us appeared before Hanse then, radiant. His face was that of the statue in the destroyed temple.

At that, Hanse wondered; he saw the radiance and yet dimly. Why was it darker; why was his god not all triumphant in pure lambence?

Why can't I move my damned head, damn it? "m the end," Ils said, "he was right and yet not wise enough. He said true in that he cannot be slain by weapons of this plane. But the knife flew true, the mortal knife off its proper plane here on the Plane of Infinity, and it struck him a killing blow, so that he began to die. But that was not possible. Thus a paradox existed. That is against the nature of things, Hanse, for the God of Gods who created all existence-aye, and who created Me-that god is Reality. Since my cousin's son Vashanka could not be slain by weapons of your plane, this dimension, he could not die in this chamber of the House of Infinity that is the domain of Lord Reality."

Of course Hanse said, "I don't understand."

"Hmp! I am sure you don't! It's heady stuff for a god! Explanations for all this won't be discovered by your kind for thousands of years, Son of Shadow. Suffice it to say that Vashanka is gone from here, and that meaning of 'here' is a broad one, indeed and in deed! Vashanka is gone from here because he cannot exist here, in this universe. He has been blown backward through a wormhole in space, which is no easier for you to understand, eh? Accept this truth, Hanse: Vashanka is ElseWhere. And though there is an infinity of possibilities, of dimensions or chambers, one is closed to him forever; used up. That one-yours-is impossible to him and does not exist for him.

"That which can never exist is the combination of Vashanka on this plane of Reality. Since he is dead but gods may not die from the weapons of mortals, he cannot be here. He can never return to this chamber of the House of Infinity."

Hanse felt that Ils had said the same thing three several ways, and all were nicely logical and avoided paradox, but ... A wormhole? In space? Yet he was not concerned with that and could not be. Vashanka was gone; Hanse must have won. He felt fine, too, except that he could not seem to lift his head or feel anything. Yet somehow being a hero made him behave as one; he did not mention that but asked a hero's question: "And Mignureal?"

"She is asleep in her bed. Was-she is risen now, and seeing to her siblings, for in Sanctuary it is dawn. As I and mine are all-powerful here now.... !"

And Eshi rose, whole and unscarred, and rushed to the prostrate Hanse.

She knelt beside him and he knew her hands were on him because he could see them. She looked up at the Lord of Lords.

"I want him, father! I want him!"

"But-me!" Hanse said. "What of me?"

Us gazed down on him. "You, beloved Son of Shadow, have defeated a god and restored Me to my own people in Sanctuary. Further, as Va-shanka had become the most powerful of the gods of Ranke, that people's power will wane. Empires die slowly, but it has begun, as of this moment."

"Yes," Hanse said almost plaintively, not even realizing the enormity of his service to gods and Ilsigi and world, "but... now? What of me- now?"

"Fa-ther," Eshi said with the sound of accusation in her voice, "his neck is broken!"

Us said quietly, "Now, Hanse, hero, you are dying."

"But-"

"His head struck this nasty damned stone and he's paralyzed from the neck down! He feels nothing, nothing!"

"But that cannot be," Ils went on, as if he had heard neither of them. "You cannot be dying, for you cannot be dead, for he who did death on you does not exist on this plane. Therefore a paradox exists, if you are dying. Therefore you cannot be dying."

Pain rose up in Hanse then, as again his body came alive, and he moved his head to look down at Eshi, whose weight was partially on him, and then that was all he felt, for all pain fled and so did each scratch and bruise.

"Uh-pardon me, uh, Lady Goddess," he grunted, and Hanse rose to face his god. To him clung the daughter of that god, herself a god. "And now? After all this, my god-what am I?"

"Now, Hanse, you return. For ten circuits of your world around the s-that is, for ten circuits of the sun-you shall have what you wish. All that you desire. We shall not be available to you. Then we shall, and you will face me again, beloved Hanse, and tell me what is your desire."

"But-"

Eshi clung to him, but her grip was broken, her fingers torn free of the mailed hero of the Ilsigi by the wind of Ils that rushed him back to Sanctuary; back to his own beloved, squalid little Thieves' World.

A glance upward showed him more of the impossible that had lately become all too commonplace for the Son of Shadow. The sky was precisely as it had been when he departed on his mission. He even recognized the oddly formed little cloud 'way out there above Julavain's Hill. It looked just like a-

But even as he paced along the narrow Maze "street," the cloud was coming apart, changing, never to be the same again.

Information was yielded Hanse by that. But it was for realization later, the fact that while hours or days had been consumed in that mighty combat in a chamber of the House of Infinity, in Sanctuary exactly no time had passed at all.