"Careful," Ischade said. Mriga glanced down and saw that just a few steps would take her into black water. Where they stood, and other souls milled, the sour cold earth slanted down into a sort of muddy strand, good for a boat-landing. The water lapping it smoked with cold, where it hadn't rimed the bank with dirty ice. Tyr loped down along the riverbank, pursuing some interesting scent. Mriga looked out across the black river, and, through the curls of mist, saw the boat coming.
It was in sorry shape. It rode low, as if it were shipping a great deal of water-believable, since many of the clinker-boards along its sides were sprung. Steering it along with the oar that is also a blade, was the ferryman of whom so many songs circumspectly sing. He was old and gray and ragged, fierce-looking: too huge to be entirely human, and fanged as humans rarely are. He was managing the blade-oar one-handed. The other held a skeleton cuddled close, its dangling bones barely held together by old, dried strings of sinew and rags of ancient flesh. The ferryman sculled his craft to shore and ran it savagely aground. Ice cracked and clinker-rivets popped, and Mriga and Siveni and Ischade were pushed and crushed together by the press of souls that strained, crying out weakly, toward the boat.
"Get back, get back," the boatman said. He lisped and spat when he talked: understandable, considering the shape his teeth were in. "I've seen you lot before, and you none of you have the fare. And what's this? Na, na, mistress, get back with your pretty eyes. You're alive yet. You're not my type."
Ischade smiled, a look of acid-sweet irony that ran icewater in Mriga's bones. "It's mutual, I'm sure. But I have the fare." Ischade held up the gold quarter talent.
The ferryman took it and bit it. Mriga noticed with amusement that afterward, as he held it up to stare at it, the coin had been bit right through. "All right, in you get," he growled, and tossed the coin over his shoulder into the water. Where it fell ripples spread for a second, then were wiped out by a wild boiling and bubbling of the water. "Always hungry, those things," grumbled the ferryman, as Ischade brushed past him, holding her dark silks fastidiously high. "Get in, then. Mortals, why are they always in such a hurry? Coming in here, weighing down the boat, has enough problems just carrying ghosts. Nah, then! No gods! Orders from her. You all come shining in here, hurt everyone's eyes, tear up the place, go marching out again dragging dead people after you, no respect for authority, ghosts and dead bodies walking around all over the earth, shameful! Someone ought to do something ..."
Mriga and Siveni looked at each other. Siveni glanced longingly at her spear, then sighed. Standing in the bows of the boat, Ischade watched them, silent, her eyes glittering with merriment or malice.
"... Never used to be that way in the old days. Live people stayed live and dead people stayed dead. You look at my wife now!-" and the ferryman bounced the skeleton against him. It rattled like an armful of castanets. "Wha'd'ye think of her?"
Siveni opened her mouth, and closed it. Mriga opened her mouth, and considered, and said, "I've never met anyone like her."
The ferryman's face softened a little, fangs and all. "There, then, you're a right-spoken young lady, even though you do be a goddess. Some people, they come up here and try to get in this boat, and they say the most frightful rude things about my wife."
"The nerve," Siveni said.
"True for you, young goddess," said the ferryman, "and that's it for them as says such things, for they're always hungry, as I say." He glanced at the water. "Never you mind, then, you just put your pretty selves in the boat, you and your friend, and give me your hard money. She don't really care what goes on out here, just so you be nice and don't tear things up, you hear? Speak her fair, that's the way. They do say she's a soft heart for a pretty face, remembering how she came to be down here; though we don't talk about that in front of her, if you take my meaning. In you get. Is that all of you?"
"One moment," Mriga said, and whistled for Tyr; then, when there was no answer, again. Tyr appeared after a moment, her gold piece still held in her teeth, and trotted to the boat, whining at it softly as it bobbed in the water. "Come on, Tyr," she said. "We have to go across. He's on the other side."
Tyr whined again, looking distrustfully at the boat, and finally jumped in.
"The little dog too?" said the ferryman. "Dogs go for half fare."
Tyr stood on her hind legs to give the ferryman the coin, then sat down on the boat's middle seat, grinning, and barked, thumping her tail on the gunwale.
"Why, thank you, missy, that's a kindness and so I shall," said the ferryman, hastily pocketing the second half of Tyr's coin, which he had bitten in two. "They don't overpay us down here, and times are hard all over, eh? It's much appreciated. Don't put your hands in the water, ladies. Anyone else? No? Cheap lot they must be up there these days. Off we go, then."
And off they went, leaving behind the sad, pushing crowd on the bank. Mriga sat by the gunwale with one arm around Tyr, who slurped her once, absently, and sat staring back the way they'd come, or looking suspiciously at the water. The air grew colder. Shuddering, Mriga glanced first at Siveni, who sat looking across the wide river at the far bank; then at Ischade. The necromant was gazing thoughtfully into the water. Mriga looked over the side, and saw no reflection ... at first. After a little while she averted her eyes. But Ischade did not raise her head until the boat grounded again; and when she looked up, some of that eternal assurance was missing from her eyes.
"There are the gates," the ferryman said. "I'll be leaving you here. Watch your step, the ground's much broken. And a word, ladies, by your leave: watch yourselves in there. So many go in and don't come out again."
Looking at the dark town crouching behind brazen gates, Mriga could believe it. Hell looked a great deal like Sanctuary.
One by one they got out of the boat and started up the slope. Siveni was last out, and so busy looking up at the rocky ground that she missed what was right under her feet. She lost her footing and almost fell, just managing to catch herself with her spear. "Hell," she said, a bitter joke: The spear spat lightnings.
The ferryman, watching her, frowned slightly. "We don't call it that here," he said. "Do we now, love?"
The bones rattled slightly. "Ah well. Off we go then...." And they were alone on the far shore.
The gates were exactly like those of the Triumph Gate not far from the Governor's Palace, but where those were iron, these were brazen, and locked and mightily barred. The four stood together, hearing more strongly than they had yet the sounds of lamentation from inside. It was beginning to sound less threatening, the way a horrible smell becomes less horrible with exposure. "Well," Siveni said, "what now? Is there some spell we need?"
Ischade shook her head, looking mildly surprised. "I don't normally use this route," she said. "And the few times I've bothered, hell's gates have been open. Very odd indeed. Someone has been making changes ..."
"Someone who's expecting us, I'll wager," Siveni said. "Allow me." She lifted up the spear, leaned back with it like a javelin-thrower, and threw it at the gates. For that moment, lightning turned everything livid and froze everything still. Thunder drowned out the cries of the damned inside. Then came a few seconds of violet afterimages and ears ringing; then the darkness, in which by the tamer light of Siveni's spearhead they could see hell gates lying twisted and shattered on the paving. Siveni picked up her spear, then swept through the opening and past the wreckage, looking most satisfied.