Blood Ties

Graves.... It was a thought. There was an old friend he had not seen since shortly after he got back from hell. He began a detour, and stopped in a wine shop for a pot of cheap red, then headed across town toward the chamel house.

The day was leaning toward noon; the sun bumed down and the streets stank under it. What did I ever see in this foul place? he wondered as he went. The answer was plain enough; Siveni's priesthood, which had been all the life he wanted. But then the priesthood was banished as Molin Torchholder went systematically about making the smaller Ilsig gods unwelcome. Then he had started making the best of things, working with the Stepsons, and with their poor replacements, until the real ones came down on the stand-ins' barracks and slaughtered them wholesale.

And Harran with them.

Alive again now, in a new body, he had rather hoped that the memory of being dead would go away. Instead it got stronger. Images of hell laid themselves pale and chill over daylight Sanctuary-the cold-smoking river, the silences broken only by the abstracted moaning of the sleepwalking damned. More remotely, through the bond he shared with Siveni and Mriga, and even with Tyr, he saw things he had never seen himself. The great black pile of the palace of hell's rulers; hell's gate burst inward by a spear that sizzled with lightnings; Ischade the terrible, coolly leading them down the path into darkness; Tyr flying in splendid rage at the throat of a monster ten times her size. And one image, brief but clear, of the cold black marble floor of that dark palace seen as if by one who groveled upon it... while just out of eyeshot, Siveni's bright helm rolled on the floor where it had slipped off her as she bowed her proud power down, begging for Harran's life.

For him... all that done for him. He could never get used to it. And no matter how many times Mriga and Siveni protested that it was nothing, that they would do it again, he could not believe them. Oh, they believed it when they said it. But their faces from day to day, as Siveni came home looking drawn and grim from the job she had made for herself, as Mriga looked at her goddess-sister with pity, and at Harran with helpless, slightly sorrowful love-their faces betrayed them. They were exiled from the heaven where they belonged, and condemned to this wretched hole of a town, for his sake.

There must be something I could do, he thought.

The breath went out of him in a

Just ahead of him, a small ragged man crouched in an alleyway, wearing a furtive look. He glanced up at Harran, looked very cautiously around him, and whispered, "Dust? You want some dust, mister?"

Harran stopped and glared at the dustmonger, who shifted uneasily under the stare. "I don't want anything of Storm-bringer's," he said. "As if that stuff does anything ... which it doesn't." And he brushed past and made for the chamel house.

The amazing smell of the place briefly drove everything, even his a

Close to the end of the building, by the big pickling vats where i

Harran had to laugh. "Not sure I could."

Grian moved his big red-headed bulk over to a bench where jars with secondhand stomachs and intestines were waiting for the sausagemakers. He pushed the jars off to the side, and Harran sat down next to him and offered him the winepot. The chicken, released, fell to scratching with great interest in the straw on the floor.

They spent a little while just drinking in companionable silence. Finally: "Home life keeping you busy?" Grian said.

"Not home so much. Work. There are too many sick people in this town, and only one of me." He took another drink. "Same as usual. You?"

"Business, business." Grian waved around him, where ten other men and women were handling the day's supply of dead bodies. "Had to hire on more help for the summer. Putting in a new muckpit, too, 'n' a new ossuary. Old one's full up. Muckpit kept overflowing. Neighbors complained." Grian laughed, a rough cheerful sound, though Harran noticed that his friend didn't breathe too deeply in the process. "They piffles, they're ruffling about trying to get the better of things again. No good. They kill somebody now and the noble-folk, the Imperials, everybody 'n' his brother comes down on 'em like bricks. Half the people in here are piffles this morning. Arrowshot, knifed, you name it. People in the city gettin' tired of them. About time, I say."

Harran agreed, passed the winepot back. Grian took a long one. "This new body," he said, elbowing Harran genially in the ribs, "working OK? Eh? Be interesting to get inside it one day, see what makes it tick."

Harran smiled again. Grian's humor never strayed far from his work. "I wonder myself, sometimes."

"Don't hold with such things myself," Grian said in cheerful disapproval. "Magic, eh, who needs it? Hear it's gone sour, and good riddance to it. So many magicians in this town, man can't spit without hittin' one. U

Harran's heart turned over in him. Not jealousy-of course not-but concern. Through the bond among them she could feel, too often, a clear cool regard turned on Molin Torchholder, a sense of vast amusement, vast satisfaction. And Siveni held a grudge better than anyone else alive. "Eh," Grian said, nudging him again. "You be careful, huh? Life's hard enough."

"Grian," Harran said, surprising himself-perhaps it was the wine-"have you ever been in a situation where you got everything you wanted, everything-and then you found out it's no good?"

Grian looked in mild perplexity at Harran and scratched his head. "Been so long since I got anything I wanted," he said softly, "I couldn't say, I'm sure. You got trouble at home?"

"Sort of," said Harran, and held himself quiet by main force for several minutes, letting Grian drink. He had started this whole thing. The thought of bringing an Ilsig goddess back into the world to set things to rights, that had been his idea. And the later, crazier idea of serving that goddess personally the stuff of fantasies-had been his idea, too. His idea it had been to bring a little knife-whetting idiot-stray home from the Bazaar as servant and casual bedwarmer. Now the idiot was sane, and not very happy; and the goddess was here, and mortal, and even less happy; and his dog was in hell, and though she was fairly happy, she missed him-and he missed her fiercely. And Harran himself was not completely mortal any more, and was also the cause of all of them having the promise of heaven snatched out from under their noses. His fault, all his fault. In this world where death wins all the fights and things run down, his fantasies had accomplished themselves and then promptly turned into muck.