And it had to be said that worship of the Dread Lord hadn't been an exactly popular religion. Human sacrifice wasn't banned on the street of Gods, as long as it didn't endanger the tourists, but it was frowned on. Tomb finally located the right key and unlocked the huge padlock affixed to the door. He pushed the door with his fingertips, and it swung silently open on its counterweights. Hawk studied the dark opening suspiciously.
"There's no one in there, Captain Hawk," said Tomb reassuringly. "After the murder was discovered I set up protective wards to keep out vandals and souvenir hunters, and they're still in place. No one's been here since I left. Follow me, please."
Tomb walked confidently into the gloom, and Hawk and Fisher followed him in, hands hovering over their weapons. A bright blue glow appeared around the sorcerer, pushing back the darkness and illuminating the hallway. The hall was grim and oppressive, without ornament or decoration of any kind. Tomb allowed them a few moments to look around, and then led them toward a door at the far end of the hall. The front door slammed shut behind them. Hawk jumped, but wouldn't give Tomb the satisfaction of looking back. The second door opened onto a rough wooden stairway, leading down into darkness.
"Watch the steps," said Tomb. "Some of them are slippery, and there's no handrail."
They followed the stairs down into the darkness for a long time. Hawk tried to keep count, but he kept losing track. By the time they reached the bottom, Hawk realized they had to be uncomfortably far beneath the city, down in the bedrock itself. Tomb gestured abruptly with his left hand, and the bright blue glow flared up, shedding its light over a larger area. Hawk and Fisher looked wonderingly about them. The stairs had brought them to a vast stone chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter. The walls were rough and unfinished, but the sharp edges left by the original cutting tools had been mostly smoothed over by air and moisture in the many years since the cavern had been hewn from the living rock.
Stalactites and stalagmites hung down from the ceiling and jutted up from the cavern floor. There were pools of dark water, and thick white patches of fungi spattered across the walls. There were cobwebs everywhere, shrouding the walls and hanging in tatters between the stalactites and stalagmites. Fisher touched one strand with a fingertip, and it stretched unnaturally before it snapped. Fisher pulled a face, and wiped her hand clean on her cloak. It was very quiet, and the slightest echo seemed to linger uncomfortably before fading away into whispers. In the middle of the cavern, the webbing had thickened and come together to form a huge hammock, hanging suspended above their heads from the thickest stalactites. It was torn and tattered now, but there was enough left to suggest the immense size of the form that had once hung within it.
"Gods come in all shapes and sizes," said Tomb quietly. "They can be human or inhuman, both and neither. People don't seem to care much, provided they're promised the right things."
"You never did say what you believed in, sir Tomb," said Fisher.
Tomb smiled. "I'm not sure I believe in anything, anymore, my dear. Working on the Street of Gods will do that to you. It makes you doubt too many things. Or perhaps it just makes you cynical. We need Gods, all of us. They offer hope and comfort and forgiveness, and most of all they offer reassurance. We're all afraid of dying, afraid of going alone into the dark. And perhaps even more than that, we need to believe in something greater than ourselves, something to give our lives meaning and purpose."
"What happened to the body?" said Hawk. "I take it the Being did have a body?"
"Oh, yes, Captain Hawk. It's over there. What's left of it."
Tomb led them across the gloomy cavern to what Hawk had taken for an exceptionally large boulder. It turned out to be a huge pile of sharp-edged objects, dark and glazed, held together in one place by strands of webbing. It took Hawk a while to work out what he was looking at, but eventually some of the shapes took on sense and meaning, and his lip curled in disgust. Going by the size of the carapace segments and the many jointed legs, the Dread Lord had been more insect than anything else. The pile of broken pieces stood nearly ten feet tall, and was easily as broad. The Being itself must have been huge. Hawk shivered involuntarily. He'd never liked insects.
"Was it in pieces like this when you found it?" he said finally.
"More or less," said Tomb. "The pieces were strewn across the floor of the chamber. Whatever killed this Being tore the body apart as though it were nothing but paper. Its followers… tidied it up."
"So the killer has to be immensely strong," said Fisher. She thought for a moment, staring at the pile before her. "This… dismembering— Was it done while the Being was still alive, or after it was dead?"
"I don't know," said Tomb. "I hadn't really thought about it. How can you tell?"
"By the amount of blood," said Hawk. "It stops flowing after you're dead. So if there's not much blood splashed around a dismembered body, it's a safe enough bet the victim was dead at the time. You learn things like that in the Northside."
"I see," said Tomb. "Most interesting. But not much help here, I'm afraid. The Dread Lord didn't have any blood. Its body was hollow."
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other. "This case gets better all the time," said Fisher.
"Do we have any clues as to the motive?" said Hawk. "Did the Dread Lord have any particular enemies or rivals? Someone who might profit by its death?"
Tomb shook his head. "There was no feud or vendetta as far as we can tell. The Dread Lord hadn't been on the Street long enough to acquire that kind of enemy."
"All right," said Hawk patiently. "Let's try something simpler. Do we know when the murder took place?"
"Some time during the early hours of the morning, nine days ago. The High Priest came down to consult with his God about whatever nihilists consider important, and found his God scattered across the cavern floor."
"Can we question him about it?" said Fisher.
"Not easily," said Tomb. "The High Priest and all the Dread Lord's followers are dead. Suicide. That's nihilists for you."
"Great," said Hawk. "No witnesses to the murder, no clues at the scene of the crime, and no one left to question. I've only been on this case a few hours, and already it's driving me crazy. Nothing in this damned case makes sense. I mean, how did the killer get down here? I assume the church was well-guarded?"
"Oh, yes," said Tomb. "Over a hundred armed guards, supplied by the Brotherhood of Steel. No one saw anything."
"I hate this case," said Fisher.
"This is the Street of Gods, Captain Fisher. Normal rules and logic don't apply here."
Hawk looked at the pile of broken and splintered chitin that had once been worshipped as a God, shook his head slowly, and turned his back on it. "We're not going to learn anything useful here. I'll call in the forensic sorcerers, and see what they can turn up." He stopped. Tomb was shaking his head. "All right. What's wrong now?"
"I don't think the Beings would allow that kind of investigative sorcery on their territory. The Gods must have their mysteries."
"Even though the sorcerers might come up with something to keep them alive?"
"Even then."
"Damn. In that case, we'll just have to do it the hard way. Take us to the next murder site, sir Tomb. And let's hope we can dig up something useful there."
At first glance it was just an ordinary house. Two storeys, slate roof, good brickwork. Windows and brasswork had been recently cleaned. It looked as out of place on the Street of Gods as a lamb in a wolfpack. Tomb knocked politely on the door, and there was a long pause.