"Have no fear," whispers my bull-headed dance partner. "I will steal your heart, that Set will have no power over you, and I will steal the Pains, and make them a betrothal gift to you."
Set slams his fist down, and a thunderclap peals through the hall. The dark god rises from his seat and leans far over the table, and by the light of a candle I have my first glimpse of my groom. He has the hideous face of a jackal, with a long pointed snout and enormous ears and a coward's spiteful eyes.
"Have done with your whispering, and your dancing, Baphomet!" His voice yowls like steel upon the whetstone. "I will not have you soiling my bride with your filthy bull's tongue."
The music stops at once, yet Baphomet whirls me around one last time. "Be ready," he whispers. "Tonight."
He releases me, and again I am in the maze, hovering before the amphora with the bitter ash burning my nostrils and the roaring wind chugging in my ears and a thousand questions whirling in my mind. Well has Poseidon twined his net, that one question answered raises two even greater. Again, I must take up the jar. Another fiber snakes from the crack; I step back and wait as it circles me once; my dread wells, and claps of thunder roll through the Clerk's Ward. The strand rounds me again, and the Market Ward shudders with my trepidation.
The golden filament circles a third time, and from the void in my chest trickles a chill swirling, a numbing current that runs and purls and grows ever more cold. A foul, swampy stink hangs thick in the air, and a stinging wind bites at my flesh. I am kneeling at the brink of a vast salt plain, staring into the inky shallows of a broad, torpid river. The black sky is booming and yowling with my father's bellowing and Set's yelping.
"Drink and be safe." Baphomet stands at my side, a black satchel slung over his shoulder. I have not seen what is inside, but the bottom hangs low with something round and heavy. "Drink, and none will have power over you."
But I do not drink. Though I carry the four ebony boxes in my own satchel, Baphomet has not returned my heart to me. Though he denies it still, I suspect that is what he carries in his black sack, and I know that this is the River Lethe-some call it by another term, but they who have drunk from it can never recall its true name. If I swallow those dark waters, I will not remember Set, or my father, and then only he who holds my stolen heart will have power over me.
"Thieves!" booms Poseidon. "Return what you have stolen!"
"Wife-stealer!" Set howls.
Baphomet's eyes widen, for he is no match for my father's fury. "Drink!"
While I recall my father's name, ever will Poseidon have the power to find me. Still, I refuse. Why should I trade one master for another? Better that they should kill each other upon the salt plain, and by their blood that I should be free.
Now does Baphomet mark my plan. "Scheming woman!"
With a circle of his wrist, he gathers my hair in his great hand and drags me forward. "You will drink!"
Quick is my hand to my dagger. Quicker still my dagger to my golden hair, and with a single slash the sharp blade cuts my bunched tresses. I fall back on my haunches. Baphomet screams and plunges headlong into the river, the dark waters dosing fast over his body.
With Poseidon's bellow thundering in my ears and Set's yowling grating down my back, I watch the inky currents many moments before Baphomet surfaces far down the river. He is choking and gagging and spewing black water from his bull's nostrils. His arms are pounding the surface. The black satchel no longer hangs from his shoulder, and when his eyes turn in my direction, there is only emptiness and confusion in his gaze.
I rise and run along the bank. At last I glimpse the dark sack, floating a hundred paces ahead and drifting faster than I can run.
From the black sky booms my father's voice. "There, Foul One, upon the shores of the Styx! Hurry, or she is lost!"
I turn to face the river, but instead of black waters, I am staring at the amphora. The wind is roaring out of the adjacent passage, stirring up eddies of gray ash, and my mouth is parched with despair. Where now, my heart: Carceri, Avalas, Malbolge? Must I pull another strand to leam the answer, then another to discover hence from there?
From that void beneath my breast rises a fierce, tumultuous boiling; it matters not whether I pull the strands one at a time or all at once, I will never know the answer until I have emptied the jar-and, now I realize, not even then! If I did jump after the satchel, I would have forgotten the reason I leapt! A ferocious storm rises in Sigiclass="underline" hailstones fall as large as fists, pounding roofs into rubble and striking men dead where they stand; gales blast through the lanes, smashing sedan chairs into walls and walls into each other; chains of lightning dance from fountain to fountain, shattering catch basins and choking deep-dug wells with rubble. The ground itself trembles beneath my rage, and fissures run down the streets side-by-side, racing to see which one can topple the most buildings. Thus does rapacious Poseidon hope to bring Sigil low: by stirring me to such a state that I destroy the city myself, so that he might stroll among the ruins and make a slave of me with nary a fight.
Perhaps, had I been fool enough to pull the stopper, the plan would have worked. The memories would have rushed from the jar and seized me one after another. In the fervor of the moment, I might have believed that I had jumped into the River Lethe after my heart, that I had drunk of its dark waters to escape Set my betrothed and Poseidon my father.
But if I drank then, how can I call the river now by its true name? Lethe.
Thus is Poseidon's treachery defeated, and now does the ground in Sigil stop quaking; the lightning fades to crackling forks, the hail blanches to cold rain, the wind but moans. The city is safe again, and so it will remain as long as the King of Seas' vile tricks remain safe inside the amphora.
And who can make that so, if not the Lady of Pain?
I fill my palm with ash, then wet it with blood squeezed from Tessali's severed hands. The patching paste is brown and coppery smelling, and sure to attract the monster of the labyrinth. Karfhud
There had been no choice, really, except to enter the conjunction. The only place for the wine woman to go had been through the black square, and so the Amnesian Hero had tucked the wayward sandal into his belt and followed. Unlike the first time he had entered one of the strange portals, he had experienced no sensation of falling, heard no great roaring, felt no wind tearing at his hair or ash scouring his face. He had merely stepped into the darkness and stood there waiting – forever it seemed-to emerge on the other side.
That was when the Amnesian Hero recalled the gout of flame that had nearly incinerated him earlier, as Silverwind stepped from the iron maze into the ashen one. The fireball had erupted the instant the bariaur passed through the conjunction: large, bright, and too hot to miss. And later, on the other side, he had cautioned the Thrasson about standing too close to the black square, for fear that it would "torch up" and draw the monster's attention.
There had been no fireball when the wine woman disappeared.
The Amnesian Hero stood pondering in the darkness, his mind spinning with fever and his sweaty body trembling with weakness. The wine woman could have gone no other place; the conjunction had been the only route out of the blind – at least that he had noticed. He considered going back to see if he had missed something, then found himself wondering if he could return. Presumably, the black square hung directly behind him, but what if he was moving? There was no fluttering in his stomach, no air stirring against his skin, no sensations at all suggesting motion – yet he had been standing there in the gloom quite some time. He had to be moving. He could imagine no other reason for the delay.