by E G Stone
That was a little disturbing. “You only favour those who fight you? That seems a bit…conflict-oriented,” I said. Life flashed her teeth in a smile I now realised was cunning and cruel. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
“You finally understand, human,” she said, turning away from the picture to prowl towards me. Yolanda let out a quiet whimper and drew back a few steps. I didn’t blame her. Life stopped mere inches from me, invading every bit of personal space I had and setting off alarm bells in my head. I was pretty certain that if I fled, though, this whole discussing Magnus thing could be thrown out. Part of me didn’t care. I would happily have given up on this investigation to go back to Death’s lands and let some other fool figure this out. Except the world would burn if I did.
Life drew a hand down my arm, the touch feather light. My hands started to shake.
“If I am not conflict, then what am I?” Life whispered in my ear.
“Terrifying,” I said, before I could stop myself. Life laughed and stepped back enough to let me breathe.
“You are amusing. I see why Death picked you.” Life turned back to her portrait. It was a pretty clear dismissal. Only, I hadn’t gotten what I came for and I really, really hated that.
“Actually, we came to ask you about Magnus,” I said. An instant later and the air was sucked from the room. The light outside the windows darkened and Yolanda squeaked in terror. Or maybe that was me.
“You dare,” Life snarled, tendrils of light swirling about her just as Death’s shadows did. “You, an emissary of the one who took Magnus from me!”
“But that’s the point,” I said, barely managing to speak the words. “Death didn’t do it. And he wants me to prove it. So I thought the best way to do that would be to get to know the victim.”
Life hissed through her teeth. She drew herself up, fairly towering over me. “You wish to know Magnus? Very well, then.”
Life moved towards me, hand stretched out. Yolanda let out a cry of alarm and I could hear her thudding steps as she moved towards me. I was entranced, though, and couldn’t move. Life just got closer and closer, until her index finger was a breath away from my forehead. With an angry laugh, Life touched me and the world fell away.
Life After Death
The first thing I noticed was pain. It radiated through my veins, burning into my bones and making every nerve ending feel as though it had been doused in fire. This was like what had happened when Death shook my hand, except I didn’t think that I was being separated from my life-force. No, this time, I was fairly certain that Life was encouraging the pain. Any prolonged contact with her and I would probably go mad.
The pain lessened and I took in great gulps of breath. I was standing on a hill, the grass short and interspersed with rocks. It wasn’t quite right, though. Wherever I looked, things were just a touch translucent. I reached out a hand and touched the ground and, sure enough, it passed right through the blades of grass.
“It is a memory, idiot human.” Life’s voice rang harsh in my ear, echoing inside my head. I straightened, pushing up my glasses, and saw her standing on the hill next to me. She was looking down the slope to where a form was sitting, hunched over an object in his lap. I recognised the man from the portrait. This was Magnus.
He was wearing all black and had a black balaclava sitting on the ground beside him. Life walked towards him and I followed. We circled around Magnus until we could see what he was doing. I was struck again by his mischievous looks. Like a child who snuck cookies from the jar and didn’t get caught. Or a person whose business laundered money for the mob. Or, as it turned out, a jewel thief.
Magnus was sitting on an outcropping of rock and had spread an array of jewellery out before him. There were three necklaces with diamonds and emeralds and sapphires and rubies, a collection of bracelets, some rings and earrings and two watches. Magnus was grinning widely, stroking a light hand over each of the pieces.
“You and I, we’re going to go places,” he said. Well, sort of. What he actually said was in a different language. Norwegian, I guessed, since that was how Death had described him. But the words that my brain actually processed were English. It was like a little translator lived in my ear, whispering the words. Actually, it was sort of like watching a news interview with someone speaking a different language.
I rubbed at my ear, trying to make the itch go away. Life snorted and shook her head at me. She folded her arms and focused her attention on Magnus, her eyes a little sad and a lot angry.
“We’re going to find a nice place for you to go and I’m going to live like a king. Those idiots in the police don’t know anything. They think it was an inside job. Ha! As if any of those buffoons could come up with something this clever.” Magnus laughed, the sound echoing off the hills around him. We were in the middle of nowhere and there probably wasn’t a person around for miles. Not to mention a road. No wonder he hadn’t been caught.
“He was the most clever thief,” Life sighed. “Pitting his intelligence against some of the great detectives and technology of this age. And never once did they even suspect him. He fought tooth and nail for what he wanted, doing everything in his power to be better than everyone else. Smarter. Faster. More nimble. More capable. He was one of the best of my champions.”
I think I understood, though it made my stomach roil. Life was like those Roman emperors who thrilled to see the gladiators fighting it out in the ring. They cheered as the blood spilled and lives were lost. And those who made it to the top were rewarded.
I decided to speak up before Life snapped out of her little swoon over Magnus and started yelling at me again. “Uh, I hate to, you know, but…how did he die?”
There was another burst of pain and we were suddenly somewhere else. Life threw her arm out and gestured, face twisted into a bestial snarl. “Like this,” she said.
We were standing in a cabin. At least, it looked like a cabin. The walls were made of wood and stone and the roof was too low for modern comfort. There was a fireplace in one corner, the flames still flickering. A bed was close to the fireplace with a table and small stove on the opposite side of the room. There was a door and two windows, and that was it. A simple life reminiscent of a time far in the past, meant for getting away from the world. Perfect for camping or hunting. Or running from the police.
Magnus’ body was sprawled across the threshold of the door. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring in horror at something long gone. His mouth hung slack jawed and his blonde hair was splattered with red. There was no more mischief in his expression. Only pain and fear.
I looked a little farther down the body and felt my stomach recoil. Magnus had been eviscerated. Literally. It was one thing to have been told this, but another to see it in person. I swallowed down bile. His intestines and stomach and other organs were strewn across him, the blood dried and turning brown. His legs were sticking out at awkward angles, as if he had tried to turn and run and found nowhere to go. Flies were gathering on his body in a dark cloud.
I turned back into the cabin and tried not to retch. This was just a memory, I told myself. There was nothing here that could harm me. I mean, I couldn’t even smell the body. I tried to tell myself it was just a movie. A really bad movie. But no movie I had ever seen had a body that looked quite so real.
“I found him like this,” Life said, her voice dry, her face twisted with disappointment. “If I had come earlier, I might have seen who killed him. But I can only show you what I found.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed, looking anywhere but at the body. “Really, I am.”
“And yet you still persist in this fallacy that my husband was not involved,” Life scoffed. She waved a hand and the world fell into pain once again. When I came to myself, I was leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. Yolanda was keeping me from falling to the floor completely, a scowl on her features.
“You should not have touched him,” she said to Life.
“I merely showed
him the truth.” Life lifted a single shoulder in a shrug and turned back to her portrait. I saw her mouth tighten at the corners and knew she was trying to rid herself of the image of Magnus’ body. I doubted she would be able to do so.
“It’s alright, Yolanda,” I wheezed. I pushed myself off the wall and straightened, one arm supported by my assistant. “I think I got all the information I could.”
“Do not return unless you wish to denounce my husband,” Life said, voice cold. I ducked my head in some sort of respectful nod and turned away. Yolanda helped me totter back down the long gallery and we never once looked back.
The troll woman spoke after we closed the door behind us and the noises of the house had returned in full force. “What did you learn?” Yolanda asked in a low voice.
“I think this is going to be a lot more complicated than I thought,” I said just as softly. I waited until we were well away from that gallery before I told Yolanda what had happened. She tugged on an ear nervously and looked around.
We were alone—or as alone as you could get in a house as busy as Life’s. We were in a room floored with marble, with high ceilings and furniture strewn about in random formation. There was a female satyr draped over a couch, giggling incoherently at another satyr’s words. Three diminutive faeries were dancing around in circles, shrieking in delight. Music came from a corner where some hunched figure was leaning over an honest-to-goodness jukebox.
Yolanda and I sat on one of the couches and put our heads together so we wouldn’t be overheard. Though I doubted that anyone in the room would want to bother with us when they were too busy drinking in Life’s essence. Death had no place here, so we were invisible.
Yolanda shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. I didn’t get any clues as to who killed Magnus. He was a jewel thief, and apparently a good one, but evisceration seems a little extreme.”
“It is a common happening, when the immortals get angry at mortals. You are so fragile,” Yolanda said. Gee, way to make me feel better. “No, she touched you. That is very, very bad.”
“What? Oh, you mean Life. Why is that so bad? I mean, it hurt. A lot. But I’m not dead. And there are no lasting effects, right?” I tried to smile encouragingly, but Yolanda was worrying me. “Right?!”
“Life and Death hold more power than any other being I have ever known,” Yolanda whispered. “Even the immortals must fall to their power. There are very few who don’t have to worry about truly dying, and therefore need not bother with Life interfering in their existence. Her touch…it amplifies her power a thousand-fold. She’s like a…what do you call it? Those big explody things that make the plant-clouds?”
“A nuclear bomb? A mushroom cloud?”
Yolanda nodded. “Her touch devastates, because people cannot handle so much concentrated life. It’s like…everything happens all at once and your brain overloads and then your body overloads and then everything goes explody.”
“So I should be a burnt-up crisp on the ground, is what you’re saying,” I said flatly. Yolanda plucked at her shirt and grimaced. But she nodded. “Oh, good. Seeing as I’m not a burnt up crisp on the ground and I feel pretty normal—circumstances notwithstanding—I’ll worry about that later. Right now, we need to figure out who killed Magnus. Then we can get as far away from here as soon as possible and I can go on with my marketing.”
“But, Cal—”
“No.” I held up a hand. “You are my assistant and must do what I say. I say we’re going to figure this out. Got it?”
Yolanda huffed. “Fine.”
“Good. So. If we can’t figure out who killed Magnus based on his apparently-common-when-immortals-get-involved wounds, then we’ll have to go about this another way,” I said. I mulled the thoughts over in my mind and watched the satyrs pour wine down their throats, dizzyingly drunk and stupidly alive. “Who would want to hurt Life badly enough to kill her warrior? Or, was it Death they were after?”
Yolanda may have looked like a creature who wouldn’t be able to do much math, but she was incredibly quick. “We figure out who wanted to hurt Life, or Death, and then we’ll figure out why Magnus was killed.”
“Exactly. Who do you know that has a grudge against Life? Or Death,” I added as an afterthought. This seemed more like a direct attack at Life to me, but I supposed I couldn’t rule the other side out. I was way, way behind any understanding of any Elsewhere politics.
“If someone is subverting Death’s power, then the balance is affected,” Yolanda said. I gave her my best confused expression. She cleared her throat and took another look around the room. The hunched figure by the jukebox swayed in time to the music—a jazz rendition of the BeeGees—and the faeries had spun themselves into a stupor. We were being ignored completely.
“The balance,” Yolanda explained, “between Life and Death is crucial. Without Death, Life would go on everlasting.”
“Isn’t that what the immortals are doing?” I asked.
Yolanda shook her head. “The immortals can die. They don’t die of old age or minor disease, but they can die. They can be actively killed. They can be brought down by a plague on their magic. They can fade into nothingness when their existence is forgotten by even themselves. It seldom happens, but it is possible.”
“Okay. So everlasting Life means that everyone just keeps going. No chance of Death. Wouldn’t loads of people want that?” I asked. I mean, really. Human doctors had been trying to figure out how to keep from dying for ages. Look at the rise in plastic surgery, if you had any doubts. Look at what I did to keep on living, for that matter.
Yolanda’s mouth tightened at the edges. “It would be…bad. The conflict that Life provides would rise to exponential scales. There would be war without end. No matter how many times you killed a soldier, she would keep rising from the ground. Elsewhere and the mortal realms would become nothing but endless carnage and temptation and revelry.”
“People would go mad,” I said softly.
“So there is balance. Necessary balance. But, if Death becomes the stronger, then society would be culled. Populations would plummet and entire species would cease to exist,” Yolanda said.
“The world could start over,” I breathed. Yolanda nodded and looked at her hands. I had this impression that she was always too nervous. That things surely couldn’t be that bad. She jumped at every unusual noise, freaked out during my interactions with Mercy and Justice, was terrified of Life. But whenever she explained things, her nervousness made perfect sense.
I hated it.
“Okay, fine.” I leaned my elbows on my knees and stared at the room. It was as though I didn’t even exist. The moment the creatures moved in my direction, some invisible force turned them away. I imagined that this was something to do with my being bound to Death. Life’s presence in his realm had caused an upset. Could my presence in Life’s realm be doing something subtler?
I took a breath. “Who would want to cause an apocalypse? Who would benefit if everyone started dying off?”
Yolanda shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m only an assistant. I don’t have any experience in this sort of thing.”
“You’ve given a whole lot of theory so far,” I pointed out.
“That’s just general knowledge. Everyone knows that,” Yolanda said.
“Okay, then we’ll have to talk to someone who knows more than general knowledge,” I said. Yolanda’s eyes widened and her greyish skin paled to a frightening degree. She shook her head violently. “Surely you know of someone who could help.”
“No,” Yolanda said firmly. She tightened her hands into fists on the couch cushion and I saw fabric start to tear. I winced, but we had to do this. The alternative was, as I feared, really, really bad. Because my not-quite-afterlife couldn’t be normal.
“So you’re just going to let this happen. Start an apocalypse,” I said. “The end of everything.”
She bit her lip, showing off her
teeth. I watched her, not looking away and giving her a chance to consider another option. I had to have this information. Yolanda would just have to get over it.
“There is…a sage. Of sorts,” Yolanda started. She furrowed her brow and looked at me desperately. I said nothing. “He lives at the top of a mountain near Death’s realm. It is not hard to find.”
“So why are you so scared, then?” I straightened in the chair, fixing Yolanda with my best stern-boss stare. She shuddered, the movement going straight from her head to her toes.
“Because of the cost,” she murmured. “He will ask a price. And you must be willing to pay it.”
“And if I’m not?” I said carefully.
“Then he will kill you for wasting his time,” Yolanda said, her words barely a breath in the air.
Ah. Well.
Why couldn’t these people just want like a pretty please, a free sandwich, and maybe some favour for the future? Why did everything have to be bloody and violent and too much drinking and life or assassins from The Order of Silence? I guess when you’re relatively immortal, some things become more important than others. And sandwiches didn’t make that list.
“Then I’d better be willing to pay the price,” I said. Yolanda let out a small cry and the satyrs looked distastefully in our direction, the first time they had actively noticed us. Yolanda and I waited, not breathing, until they looked away, though I don’t know why we were so nervous about anyone overhearing. No one else would be stupid enough to get involved in stopping the apocalypse.
“Look, I know that you’re scared. But we need this information. Or, besides the end of the world, we’d be letting Death down. He hired me to help protect his image and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. You don’t have to come, if you don’t want.”