Indeed? Then why weren’t Easterners allowed into the Paths of the Dead, assuming we’d want to be? But this wasn’t the time to ask.
Aliera continued, “I couldn’t leave either, for that matter. And didn’t the Empress Zerika manage? And for that matter, what about you? I know what being a Lord of Judgment means, and there’s nothing that makes you so special that you should be immune to these effects. You’re lying.”
Verra’s face lost its smile, and her multijointed hands twitched—an odd, inhuman gesture that scared me more than her presence. I expected Aliera to be destroyed on the spot, but Verra only said, “I owe you no explanation, little Dragon.”
Aliera said, “Yes, you do,” and Verra flushed. I wondered what it was that had passed between them.
Then Verra smiled, just a little, and said, “Yes, perhaps I do owe you an explanation. First of all, you are simply wrong. You don’t know as much about being a god as you think you do. Easterners hold gods in awe, denying us any humanity. Dragaerans have the attitude that godhood is a skill, like sorcery, and there’s nothing more to it than that. Neither is correct. It is a combination of many skills, and many natural forces, and involves changes in every aspect of the personality. I was never human, but if I had been, I wouldn’t be now. I am a god. My blood is the blood of a god. It is for this reason that the Halls of Judgment cannot hold me.
“In the case of Zerika, she was able to leave because the Imperial Orb has power even here. Still, we could have stopped her, and we nearly did. It is no small thing to allow the living the leave this place, even those few who are capable.
“Your Easterner friend could never have come here without a living body to carry him. No, the soul doesn’t matter, but it’s more complicated than that. It is the blood. As a living man he could bring himself here, and as a living man he can leave.” She suddenly looked at me. “Once. Don’t come back, Fenarian.” I tried not to look as if I were shaking.
Verra went on, “And as for you, Aliera ...” Her voice trailed off and she smiled.
Aliera flushed and looked down. “I see.”
“Yes. In your case, as perhaps your friends told you, I had some difficulty in persuading certain parties to allow you to leave. If you weren’t the heir to the throne, we would have required you to stay, and your companion with you. Are you answered?”
Aliera nodded without looking up.
“What about me, boss?”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I screwed up my courage and said, “Goddess, I need to know—”
“Your familiar shares your fate, of course.”
“Oh. Yes. Thank you.”
“Thanks, boss. I feel better.”
“You do?”
Verra said, “Are you ready to leave, then? You should depart soon, because if you sleep, none of you will live again, and there are imperial rules against the undead holding official imperial positions.”
Aliera said, “I will not leave without my cousin.”
“So be it,” snapped Verra. “Then you will stay. Should you change your mind, however, the path out of here is through the arch your friends know, and to the left, past the Cycle, and onward. You may take it if you can. The Lord Morrolan will find his life seeping away from him as he walks, but he can try. Perhaps you will succeed in bringing a corpse out of this land, and denying him the repose of the Paths as well as the life which is already forfeit. Now leave me.”
We looked at each other. I was feeling very tired indeed.
For lack of anywhere else to go, we went past the throne until we found the archway beneath which we’d first met Kieron the Conqueror. To the right was the path to the well, which was still tempting, but I still knew better. To the left was the way out, for Aliera and me.
I discovered, to my disgust, that I really didn’t want to leave Morrolan there. If it had been Aliera who had to stay, I might have felt differently, but that wasn’t one of my options. We stood beneath the arch, no one moving.
I opened the box. The sensation I’d felt upon touching it became stronger. It contained a sheathed dagger. Touching the sheath was very difficult for me. Touching the hilt was even more difficult.
“I don’t like this thing, boss.”
“Neither do I.”
“Do you have to draw it before—”
“Yes. I need to know I can use it. Now shut up, Loiosh. You aren’t making this any easier.”
I drew the dagger and it assaulted my mind. I found my hand was trembling, and forced my grip to relax. I tried to study the thing as if it were just any weapon. The blade was thirteen inches, sharp on one side. It had enough of a point to be useful, but the edge was better. It had a good handguard and it balanced well. The hilt was nonreflective black, and—
Morganti.
I held it until I stopped shaking. I had never touched one of these before. I almost made a vow never to touch one again, but careless vows are stupid, so I didn’t.
But it was a horrible thing to hold, and I never did get used to it. I knew there were those who regularly carried them, and I wondered if they were sick, or merely made of better stuff than I.
I forced myself to take a few cuts and thrusts with it. I set up a pine board so I could practice thrusting it into something. I held it the whole time, using my left hand to put the board against a wall on top of a dresser. I held my right hand, with the knife, rigidly out to the side away from my left hand. I must have looked absurd, but Loiosh didn’t laugh. I could tell he was exercising great courage in not flying from the room.
Well, so was I, for that matter.
I thrust it into the board about two dozen times, forcing myself to keep striking until I relaxed a bit, until I could treat it as just a weapon. I never fully succeeded, but I got closer. When I finally resheathed the thing, I was drenched with sweat and my arm was stiff and sore.
I put it back in its box.
“Thanks, boss. I feel better.”
“Me, too. Okay. Everything is set for tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”
As we stood, I said to Aliera, “So tell me, what’s so special about you that you can leave here and Morrolan can’t?”
“It’s in the blood,” she said.
“Do you mean that, or is it a figure of speech?”
She looked at me scornfully. “Take it however you will.”
“Ummm, would you like to be more specific?”
“No,” said Aliera.
I shrugged. At least she hadn’t told me she owed me no explanation. I was getting tired of that particular phrase. Before us was a wall, and paths stretched out to the right and to the left. I looked to the right.
I said, “Morrolan, do you know anything about that water Verra drank and fed to Aliera?”
“Very little,” he said.
“Do you think it might allow us to—”
“No,” said Aliera and Morrolan in one voice. I guess they knew more about it than I did, which wasn’t difficult. They didn’t offer any explanations and I didn’t press the issue. We just stood for a long moment, then Morrolan said, “I think there is no choice. You must go. Leave me here.”
“No,” said Aliera.
I chewed on my lower lip. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then Morrolan said, “Come. Whatever we decide, I wish to look upon the Cycle.”
Aliera nodded. I had no objection.
We took the path to the left.
The horizon jumped and misted, the candle exploded, the knife vibrated apart, and the humming became, in an instant, a roar that deafened me.
On the ground before me, the rune glowed like to blind me, and I realized that I was feeling very sleepy. I knew what that meant, too. I had no energy left to even keep me awake. I was going to lose consciousness, and I might or might not ever regain it, and I might or not be mad if I did.
My vision wavered, and the roar in my ears became a single monotone that was, strangely, the same as silence. In the last blur before I slipped away, I saw on the ground, in the center of the rune, the object of my desire—that which I’d done all of this to summon—sitting placidly, as if it had been there all along.