Death's Collector

by Bill McCurry

  “Base, repellant fart-sucker.”

  “Is that an offer? Or a self-portrait?”

  “It is an insult. It’s the first insult you ever dared say to me. I had hoped you would remember it. I have remembered it.”

  “I’m pleased to see that it was noteworthy. What about that offer?”

  “Ass-kissing haddock. Nasty, corrupting, soul-shitting filth. Slab-fisted, demon-gutting asshole.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, I’m not done. Pillar of bile and body odor. Scat-face bastard. Floppy rodent’s dick. Malevolent goat’s tit. Craven, gut-munching bastard. Nasty, pig-screwing monster. Cheap paper god with half-assed village juggler powers. Those are some of my favorites. Would you like to say anything?”

  “Well… since they’re so good, maybe you could give me a discount.”

  “Goodbye, Murderer. You no longer mean anything.”

  Harik hurled me back into my body with crushing force.

  I tried Gorlana, but she ignored me. I even tried Krak, but to him maybe I wasn’t worth noticing. I tried Fingit. I gritted my teeth and tried Lutigan. Then I tried Cassarak and Trutch and all the other twelve gods. None would even stoop to speak with me.

  I sat down on the floor, and then I lay down on it. When food came, I ignored it. Instead, I slept. I woke for a moment the next time the grate screeched open, rubbed my stumps against my itching chest and face for a while, and went back to sleep. The next time I woke, I ate and drank, and then I lay down to sleep beside the door so I wouldn’t have to crawl far when food came.

  I stopped keeping count of the times I ate, but I kept living this way for what I would have said was “a long time.” Looking back, it must’ve been around three hundred meals. By the time I’d eaten fifty or sixty of them, my entire body was itching, which distracted me from the knives and spikes in my head.

  Some time after that, the nausea started. It was barely noticeable at first among the scratching and the knives, but within another fifty meals or so, I had trouble keeping the gruel from jumping back out of my stomach. I didn’t see how it could get much worse.

  Another hundred meals went by, and then a strip of skin fell off my leg. More meals passed while strips and patches of skin kept dropping off me. I sported two dozen raw places by the time I stopped counting, with more skin falling loose all the time.

  After one meal identical to hundreds of others, I lay my head against the cool stone, rubbing my stumps around the dozens of raw places and swallowing a lot to keep my meal down. I noticed that the spiteful underworld bugs were crawling on me, and I didn’t mind. Hell, they were almost like friends now. I snatched one up with my toes and thought, “This is my life.”

  Being a sorcerer had been my life. Being a father had been my life. Killing people had been my life. Now this was my life. What would my life be next? I laughed, and the sound shocked me. “You damned idiot. Next, being a corpse will be your life, and after that, being supper for your friends, the bugs.”

  It seemed petty of the bugs to eat me, since I hadn’t eaten them, although I could have. I hadn’t refrained because of a delicate palate, either. I had eaten things that made bugs taste like biscuits. It would have been smart to eat them, if nothing else for variety.

  I gazed at the bug in my toes, although it was a hypothetical gaze in the darkness. The bug wiggled and tried to run, but I could feel that it wasn’t the tiniest bit hurt. I rolled the bug on its back, like a magician with a coin between his fingers. I dropped it, and I assume it ran off to tell its friends I was crazy and would be ready to eat soon.

  I jerked up straight and stared toward my feet. After a few deep breaths, I spread my toes and pulled with them. Something in the nothingness pulled back.

  I eased down to lie on my back and took slow breaths for a minute as I contemplated what had just happened. If there had ever been a time when it was important for me not to be stupid, this was it. I had saved only a sliver of power when Vintan kicked the crap out of us at his camp. If I used it all now to break out of the cell, the guards could just grab handless Bib and throw him right back in.

  At last, I sat up again and used my left toes to pull a single green band out of the air. With the same toes, I drew bones and flesh from my right stump. A minute later, on the end of my right arm, I had something that was not a hand. Or, it could be called a hand if you accepted that hands were created out of clay by four-year-olds. I had just three awful digits, a thumb and two fingers, but they could push, hold, slap, and punch, if you weren’t too particular about defining those actions.

  I pulled a blue band from the air with my new thing-that-might-be-considered-a-hand, and I pushed against the door near the top hinge. The wood around it rotted, and the rot spread to the other hinges. I used the last particles of power to rot the whole edge of the door.

  Using my new hand to mark my target, I stepped back and threw my bare shoulder against the door. If doors could laugh at people, this one would’ve laughed at me. I shifted my aim and threw myself again, but nothing moved. I aimed again, and this time, I bounced off, but something in the door gave a tiny squeak. Breathing fast, I hit that spot over and over until both shoulders hurt like hell, but eventually I heard the door shift every time I hit it. About the millionth time I smashed the door, it shrieked its death cry and toppled into the hallway. The crash echoed like the clash of all the gods’ weapons since the beginning of time.

  When emotional, I am given to poetic exaggeration.

  Unarmed, half-naked, barefoot, part-flayed, and caked in unthinkable filth, I trotted up the hallway in the direction Vintan had taken the day he stuck me in that rat-gagging cell. I trailed my new hand along the wall so I didn’t bang into it in the pure darkness. Pretty soon I saw a speck of dimness that grew into a brain-shredding spear of light. Somebody, probably a guard, was ambling around up near that light. His footsteps traveled to me with a bit of an echo, but they lacked vigor. He might be dressing, or getting another beer. He might be assessing different spots he could use to jump out and cut an escaping prisoner in half.

  I knelt to wait for my eyes to adjust. Experience has shown me it’s far easier to kill people when you can see them.

  Twenty-Nine

  Nobody has ever paid me to do magic. I guess I could have charged people to mend their bones and cure their children, or to make frogs rain on their nasty neighbors. I know they would have paid, and it wouldn’t have been wrong of them. But magic doesn’t really belong in this world. It’s a mistake, like a beetle that falls into the cake batter. I’m convinced of this. In no other part of existence can things be created out of nothing.

  Some wise and generous sorcerers have disagreed with me on that. They were ass-flapping idiots, and I told some of them so to their faces.

  If a man pays for something, he has a right to it. But it’s not healthy for any man to think he has a right to something that shouldn’t even exist. Not even sorcerers have a right to magic. They have to give pieces of themselves away for it. I therefore decided that no one has a right to anything, and I trust my judgment on whom to help or hurt with magic.

  Some wise and generous sorcerers have called me an arrogant fool who behaves like he’s as wise as any god, and their arguments have merit.

  Since even sorcerers need to eat, and to drink hard beverages, I have worked at several trades. My father taught me to be a fisherman, but I hate being wet, cold, tired, and always one slip away from drowning. After I left sorcery training, I took a job in a stable, where I shoveled a mountain of horse shit. I also freely cured, blessed, and otherwise helped the people of a dozen nearby villages. A year later, I could train and ride horses like a demon, and the people of a dozen villages wanted to kill me because their lives weren’t perfect and I wouldn’t fix it. I employed my new riding skills to flee on a stolen horse. Those people hated me so much they chased me all the way to a different continent.

  A blacksmith took me as his apprentice. I hated the work and was a lousy apprentice, b
ut that was fine since he was a lousy blacksmith. During my lousy blacksmithing days, I helped people or let them suffer or sometimes made them suffer, as seemed right to me. I’m sure I often made bad choices, but entire villages never tried to murder me, either.

  After I spent a few years working for the blacksmith, he got drunk one night, fell in the gutter, and drowned in six inches of water. Since no sane person would hire me as a blacksmith, I spent a lot of time drinking. Then a tavern keeper hired me to run off some threatening drunks, and before long, I was solving problems for men with plenty of money but little skill in physical persuasion. I met, worked with, and, in some cases, killed many colorful folks in the same business as me. Most liked having me around, since stabbings were common. I felt we were doing good work, helping potentates and people of means, but in hindsight, they were just slightly better than the criminals we caught or killed for them.

  I did that work for years, up until I began working as a murderer.

  Back in my cell, before I had bashed down the door, I had wondered whether I might be able to take up a different trade now. But as I crept up out of that dark prison hallway toward a lighted room, I knew that killing people would be my soundest strategy. I wouldn’t get past any guards by buying them drinks and telling them they had pretty hair.

  I rushed into the small watch room and met a flat-footed, empty-handed guard who gaped at me. Although imprisonment had weakened me, I smashed him against the wall twice and stomped him when he fell. I stripped off his shirt, which was soft and embroidered, and wriggled into it. I left the boots. There was no chance of pulling them on with no hands and just one claw.

  I swung the man’s sword to feel the balance, which was adequate. My grip, however, was poor. Any fine blade work would be a chancy proposition. I wanted to slice the guard’s throat. All of my physical outrages, the headache and itching and nausea, would disappear when I killed this man for Harik. But I found that I might not mind holding off killing him for now, or maybe even never killing him at all.

  It wasn’t exactly the right time for evaluating moral choices. With a sliver of regret and a barrelful of relief, I slashed his throat. Blood sprayed almost to the ceiling. I closed my eyes and let the suffering drift away, like dirt in a warm bath. I didn’t even mind the dozens of skinless places on my body, or the weakness that months of lying on a stone floor had endowed me with.

  The room opened onto a wider, better-lit hallway with nicer cells for more important prisoners. I assumed that to be true. The cell doors were far newer and cleaner than mine had felt, anyway. I trotted up the passage until I heard two voices from an open door. I was clumsy and tired, so I’d probably fail if I tried to sneak in. I wasn’t sure I could take them both at the same time with a screaming assault. So, I just strolled through the doorway into the watch room as if I’d been there a thousand times. Two guards glanced at my shirt for a moment. Then one of them went back to sharpening his knife. The other squinted at me and cocked his head. I killed them both. It felt good, and I didn’t have any doubts or confusion about whether to let people live.

  Beyond this room, a stairway led up, which heartened me. I climbed eleven flights of stone steps in the torchlit stairwell, and at the top, a short passage ended in a solid wooden door. Loud but indistinct voices bounced against the other side of the door, along with laughter and some shouting. I listened for as long as I dared before retreating back to the stairway.

  At least five men stood, sat, or played grab-ass just beyond that door. Maybe more. They were probably guards and not Moris’s finest fighters. But even at my best, with the strongest arm and the biggest balls, killing four active, competent men would be a challenge, and then only with tactical advantages like surprise or magic. Killing five men would require some fine luck. Killing six would be ridiculous.

  I was so far beneath my best that I didn’t remember how it looked or felt. Instigating an arduous sword fight without even one proper hand would be fatal. I might as well kick a bear in the nuts and lie down to show my belly. I’d rather get stabbed twice through every organ than go back to that cell, but that wasn’t my preferred outcome. I’d prefer to kill everybody in sight and then saunter out of the room.

  Every god had denied me those past months, but then I had been just a mutilated blob waiting to die. Now that I was making plans and dealing death again, things might be different. I considered my choices and then lifted myself to call for Gorlana.

  “Murderer, what have you done to yourself? It’s just repugnant. What woman would allow you to touch her with that nightmarish appendage? A prostitute would charge you triple just to hold her hand.”

  “Mighty Gorlana, I’ve missed you. I hear more music in your voice than usual. Has something bad happened to Harik, or Cassarak? Has it caused you joy?”

  “Oh, be still! I was just positive that you were dead. But since Harik has lost interest in you, you are common property. I’m free to demand that you tell me just when in the name of Weldt’s third penis you will start making that bitch of a river spirit suffer.”

  I had forgotten that I’d implied to the goddess that Limnad would endure some sort of anguish at my hand. “Oh, the plan is progressing just fine. The Nub made her fall in love with him so he can break the shit out of her heart. It may take a long time, but the longer he waits, the more she’ll suffer.”

  She pouted like a five-year-old girl. “I’m skeptical. No, that’s not true. I know you are lying to me, you flip-brain dolt. But today you’ve returned from the dead, and as a gift, I’ll set the subject aside.” The goddess Gorlana applauded herself. “But we will talk about it later. I have an excellent memory, godlike as you know. Now, what do you want? And please be brief. My soup and my dinner companion are getting cold.”

  “I want power, and I’m open on the terms of payment. Fairly open. I ask that you make me an offer.”

  “All right, I’ve been thinking about this as we talked, since talking to a simple creature like yourself requires nearly no concentration. I’ll offer you one square, and in exchange, you will overthrow King Moris and put his cousin Skek on the throne.”

  One square was just about what I’d need to fully restore both my hands, but I had hoped for more. “With respect, you must think I’m stupider than Lutigan. Three squares, and in exchange, I’ll make every horse in this stronghold hate Moris. And piss on him when he walks by.”

  “Sad. It hurts me to see how much less interesting you’ve become. One square, and in exchange, Ella and Prestwick will forget everything they know about you.”

  I laughed. “Mighty Gorlana, that tattered offer insults the memory of our past trades. Two squares, and I will teach Crown Prince Prestwick, future King of Glass, the full cycle of poems in the Miraculous Feats and Adventures of the Radiant Goddess Gorlana. You know, lie to the boy.”

  “It does appeal to me, but I can see you’re trying to play on my vanity, as if I were a flighty girl you could flip onto her back. One square, and in exchange, I take Ella from you.”

  “Take? Just so there won’t be any misunderstanding on this point, you would not kill her, correct?”

  “You’re correct, Murderer. I see that you believe you have a future with her. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, maybe you do but will wish you hadn’t. You don’t know. When I say I will take her from you, that means you give up any future with her. You agree that I can take it from you.”

  I swallowed and clenched my fists before I remembered that she could see me. “Unacceptable. Two squares—”

  “That is the offer. It’s the only offer, darling Murderer. I can tell what she means to you. You can’t hide these little things from me, you know. I am Gorlana.”

  “I’ll kill Moris.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll kill Moris and dump his body in his bedchamber back home.”

  “No.”

  “I won’t dump it. Instead, I’ll kill his wife and brothers and sisters and arrange the whole fornicating lot
of them around the bedchamber like they were having a little party.”

  “Think not.”

  “How many people do you want me to kill? Or do you want me to save people? Name something else you want me to do.”

  “There is nothing else. I know you’ll die if you refuse. Don’t deny it, you’ll look silly. Sillier.”

  I reconsidered whether my claw and I had a chance against those men behind the door. The answer was no, and not much reconsideration was needed. Would Ella and Pres be all right even if I got hacked apart? As long as nobody came close to rescuing Pres, he’d be safe from Vintan, and she’d be safe with Pres. But someday, that paranoid son of a dripping whore would think rescue was coming, as sure as pigs have gristle. Then he’d kill the boy and probably kill Ella too. It might not happen for years, or maybe it would happen next week.

  I ran through it again. To protect Ella, I needed to live long enough to kill Vintan, and to get to him, I needed to fight my way through this room. I needed hands to fight, and I needed Gorlana’s power to fix my hands. That was the logic, straight through from beginning to end.

  I said, “I hate you.”

  “Then everything is going along just fine.”

  “I want something more. Something besides power. Something no other god is wise enough to give me.”

  “Well, you certainly have my interest.”

  “Gorlana, Goddess of Mercy, Healer of All Bodies and Hearts, I want a cure for the Northmen fever.”

  The goddess pointed at me and giggled. “That’s silly. You already know how to cure it.”

  “I want a cure any man can make, even someone who’s not a sorcerer. A cure that’s simple to mix and made from things that are common and easy to find.”

  “That would create an awful precedent! Non-sorcerers curing people? Think of something else.”

  “No, if you’re just offering one square, then we have no deal. Offer me one square and the cure, and I’ll agree to your terms.”

  “What has Harik done to you? You were never this difficult when you belonged to me. Very well, we are agreed. Murderer, you have become almost interesting again. I rather hope you don’t die right away.”