Mym reversed his course. No, he had no need and no desire to hurt Rapture or her friend. He would set the example that he wished mortals would follow and accept the inevitable with what grace he could muster.
He returned to his castle and walked in the garden, severely out of sorts. It was true that he and Rapture had been growing apart, and her initiative had been valid. But he had discovered the joy of loving and being loved with Orb and rediscovered it with Rapture; he could no longer countenance being alone.
Orb. Where was she now?
Lila appeared. "So she dumped you," she said.
Damn her! Except that she was already damned. "No thanks to you, demoness," he said.
"She wasn't right for you anyway," Lila said. "Maybe she was when you were playing the Prince-Princess game among the mortals, but not for this situation. You need a woman who understands about Incarnations."
"True. I shall look for one."
She smiled, inhaling. She now wore one of her translucent outfits that were more maddeningly suggestive than full nudity would have been. "No mortal will do, Mym. You need one who is committed to the Afterlife."
"Thanatos seems to do well enough with a mortal."
"Thanatos has a quite remarkable mortal. There is not another like Luna."
"You err, demoness. There is her cousin Orb."
Lila shrugged eloquently. "That's right. You had an affair with her, didn't you! But that's long over, and you can't go back."
"I'm not so sure. I loved her before, and she loved me.
I could love her again."
Lila paced in front of him, allowing her flesh to quiver provocatively. "You finished that relationship when you deserted her for another woman."
"That was not my choice!"
"Nevertheless, you left her in a rather difficult situation. You see, she was gravid."
"Gravid?"
"With child. It happens to mortals, you know."
"Pregnant? She couldn't have been!"
"Verify it in Fate's threads, Mym. She was carrying your baby girl and she bore her after you left and gave her up for adoption. That rather finished that aspect of your romance. I doubt very much that she would choose to go through that again."
"But she never said anything to me!"
"She didn't know it when you deserted her."
Mym was stricken. "If I had known!"
"Fortunately, creatures of the Afterlife don't get gravid. With them, it's all pleasure, no consequence. So
why don't you become sensible and do what you have been longing to do for so long?" She shimmered, and her clothing dissolved into mist. She opened her arms. "I can be most accommodating, Mym, and I make no demands."
He looked at her. This creature of Hell seemed on the verge of victory at last. Her body was beautiful, but her nature demonic. He trusted her to serve her master, and her master was Satan.
He tasted the blood in his mouth again. This time he let the berserker reflex take over.
Abruptly he was moving. His great Red Sword was out and whistling. It lopped off her head. The head flew up, its face surprised; the body remained standing. There was no blood.
The Sword whistled back. It lopped off the upper arms and the top of the torso cleanly at the line of the breasts. The shoulders rose, and the neck and the tops of the two breasts, also bloodlessly. The nether sections of the breasts resembled two bowls filled precisely level with gray stuffing. Both sections of that bosom were expanding, for Lila had been inhaling at the moment of his attack.
Again the Sword passed through, severing the body at the slender waist. And again, at the genital region, and at the knees. Five swift cuts, and the body was tumbling in six major segments, which in turn were fragmenting as the separate arms and legs fell skew. In a moment there was simply a collection of items on the ground.
"In this manner, too, I am ready to serve you," the head said. It was lying to the side, where it had bounced and rolled. The truncated neck was up, the face inverted.
"I just want to be rid of you!" Mym gritted.
"Then stuff my parts in a trunk and ship it straight to Hell," the head said.
"I have no trunk." Mym was looking at his Sword and finding no blood on the blade. His berserker rage had faded, being replaced by bemusement. He had known that demons differed from people, but had not been quite prepared for this.
"Use the base of the statue."
Mym went to the copulating statue and hacked off its figures. The pedestal now manifested as a hollow chamber. He sheathed the Sword and wrestled this zip. It was indeed about the configuration of a coffin.
He picked up a piece of torso and dumped it in the chest. The piece was like warm wax, firm but slightly soft, the flat cut side no different from the exterior. Obviously Lila had had no digestive apparatus, no circulatory system, and no respiratory system. She was simply a shape formed of pseudo-flesh, a body without a person.
Yet she had walked and talked and seemed alive. She had sewn mischief with Rapture, and much of what she said made infernal sense. She was not a person, obviously-yet she was also not inanimate matter. What, then, was she?
He paused, with the upper and lower sections of a leg. He tried fitting them together. They fused, forming the fall leg.
"You may put me together again if you wish," the head said. "One more section, and you will be reaching interesting territory."
Mym dropped the leg into the chest. He picked up the pieces of the other leg, and the arms. Then he got to the section of the torso from the waist to the mid-bosom. It was amazing how full and firm those half breasts were, as far as they went.
"Or you could reassemble just that portion of me you wish to use," the head suggested.
He dumped the half bust in. "I prefer a genuine woman."
"A genuine woman would dump you in favor of a mortal man," the head retorted. "Here in the Afterlife, you need a woman of the Afterlife."
There was that insidious logic of hers. What she said made more sense than he cared to accept. He had to try to refute it. "I am not of the Afterlife; I am a mortal in temporary residence. I need a woman in similar circumstance."
"That, too, can be provided," the head said.
Mym finished dumping the rest of the body in the chest, but hesitated to pick up the head itself. So he talked to it a moment more. "How can such a thing be provided?"
"You could take up with a female Incarnation. The youngest aspect of Fate, called Clotho, is known to be obliging."
Mym visualized the young, pretty Oriental, Clotho. The notion appealed. But then he remembered the far more mature Lachesis, actually the same Incarnation in different form. Surely the minds of Fate were the same, though the body changed. In that sense, she was no better than the demoness. A young and innocent body with an experienced and cynical mind was not what a man really desired in a woman. Also, Fate surely had associations of her own and would not necessarily be eager to take up with a man like him.
"Then there's-but, of course, you wouldn't be interested in her," the head remarked.
An obvious ploy! But Mym still was not eager to pick up the talking head, so he accepted the ploy. "Who?"
"She's a damsel, a princess, locked in a castle of frozen mist, unable to escape because no one cares about her. But, of course, that's none of your business."
"Who is she?"
"Her name's Ligeia. But-"
"Why was she put there?"
"It's her penalty for the mischief she did in life."
"Oh-she's another demoness."
"No. She's a damned soul."
"There's a distinction?"
The head laughed. "Certainly there is! Demons are creatures of Hell, who serve My Lord Satan implicitly. They are constructs of ether with no living processes, exactly as you see in my flesh here. Souls are the immortal essences of mortal beings; they share the consciousness, intellects, and feelings of mortals, but no longer have mortal existence."
"Like the staff of the Castle of War,
" Mym agreed. "But since they aren't mortals, they are hopelessly committed to the Afterlife and are no better for my purpose than are you demons."
"True. But Ligeia is a special case. She was improperly damned, and if she could only get a fair hearing, she might be reclassified."
"Why can't she get a hearing?"
"A fair hearing. There are hearings aplenty in Hell, but they aren't fair. Every time she tries to present her case, they laugh at her. She must be pretty upset by now. I think she'd really be appreciative if someone with some power were to take up her case. But of course, if she got her fair hearing, and won reprieve, she'd only go to Heaven, so that would be the end of that. There's no point in someone like you getting involved with her."
Mym was sure by Lila's attitude that she wanted him to get involved with Ligeia, so he reacted negatively. "I agree," he said, and caught up a trailing strand of hair and lifted the head by it and swung it into the chest. "Now how do I ship this to Hell?"
"Simply address it for the destination," the head said. The words were somewhat muffled, because the face was now down.
"To Hell with you!" Mym said.
The chest and its contents exploded. A dense cloud of smoke puffed out. When it dissipated, the chest was gone.
The next call for the supervision of Mars was in Ireland. When Mym arrived with his grim entourage, he surveyed the situation in his usual fashion and learned that the Hibernian Army, a revolutionary organization, had used gene-splicing technology to develop a virus that affected only Protestants. They were about to loose a plague that would either kill or greatly debilitate those it infected. The HA would not even have to fight; they would simply take over after the plague had done its grisly work.
"Isn't this phenomenal!" the Incarnation of Pestilence exclaimed. "It has been long since I have had the opportunity to supervise a dread plague!"
"Gene-splicing," Mym murmured thoughtfully. "I have a feeling Gaea will be on this, if I don't check it with her first." He put a hold on the action, mounted Werre, and headed for the residence of the Incarnation of Nature.
But when they reached the Green Mother's estate in Purgatory, they encountered an enormous moat that shielded it from intrusion. Mym sought to have Werre simply hurdle it or trot across it, but the palomino shied away.
"What is this?" Mym asked the horse. "There is nothing in the world that you can't traverse."
But Werre simply neighed in negation. Mym remembered that this was not the world; it was Purgatory, a region of different rules. This moat might be enchanted to balk equines.
He dismounted and stepped to the bank. Immediately a weird sort offish swam close. No, not a fish; it had the legs and lower torso of a man. But above the waistline it possessed the fins and gills of a fish, and its mouth was full of teeth.
"A manmer," Mym murmured. He had never seen one in the flesh before, but there was no mistaking the crossbreed. A merman had the top section of a man and the tail of a fish; the manmer was the opposite. While it was possible to get along with mermen and mermaids, and maidmers could be tolerably good company if one's interest was not in faces, manmers were said to have the worst elements of each species. They were brainlessly vicious, existing only to tear apart victims.
Mym made as if to touch the water with his boot, and the manmer snapped at it so violently that a spray of water and sparks went up. No question, this monster meant business.
He pondered, then touched the Sword. "Gaea," he sang.
The woman did not appear. Instead a colorful parrot flew in. "Who seeks? Who seeks?" the bird demanded.
"Mars seeks Gaea," Mym replied, annoyed.
"Prove it! Prove it!" the parrot squawked.
"You birdbrain, don't you see me?"
"I see a hundred like you every day," the parrot replied. "All fakes sent by Satan to pester my mistress."
A hundred like him a day? Suddenly Mym realized that Satan was up to more mischief, trying to infiltrate his demon minions into Nature's domain by imitating the Incarnations. No wonder Gaea had instituted defensive measures. "Go tell Gaea and she can verify for herself my validity."
"The Green Mother is busy with her own concerns; she can not waste her time exposing every imposter."
That, too, made sense. "How can I prove my identity to you, so that you will advise her of my presence?"
"Get in to see her yourself," the parrot squawked. "Only a true Incarnation can do that." And it flew away.
Mym sighed. Right when he needed to consult with Gaea, Satan had set up an interference pattern. Unfortunate timing.
Unfortunate? No, maybe Satan had planned it that way, to prevent Mym from completing the consultation, so that Gaea would not be alerted, and the plague would not be halted before it ravaged the Protestants.
That meant that it was doubly important that he get through. He was really opposing Satan, not Gaea.
But the manmer waited with eager teeth. Though Mym knew himself to be invulnerable to mortal attack, he was not at all sure about the present situation. If an immortal were invulnerable to the teeth of the manmer, the demons would be able to get through. Certainly Werre didn't trust his flesh to that water, and there was evidently a spell to prevent the horse from leaping or flying over the moat. Mym didn't care to risk his flesh that way.
Well, he could still pass. He drew the Red Sword. "I regret this, Manmer," he said. "But I'm going to have to slay you in order to pass."
But still he hesitated. Demons could wield swords, too, and would certainly be willing. Why hadn't they done so?
The more he considered, the less easy he became. Finally he picked up a loose stone and threw it across the moat.
At the far bank, the stone exploded. Something had destroyed it.
That something was apt to do the same thing to a man or a demon. Again, it wasn't worth risking. Also, he really didn't want to slay a creature, the manmer, who was only doing the job it had been assigned.
But how was he supposed to pass, if a demon could not? There had to be a way, or this was no valid test for his identity.
He considered, and decided that he would have to do some perhaps unpleasant research. He got down beside the water and, when the manmer snapped at him, he put one discorporate hand into the creature itself. Startled, the fishman paused in place, and Mym dropped the rest of his body onto it and into it. His arms aligned with the fins, his head with its head, his legs with its legs. He had phased in, physically.
He adjusted his brain, getting it aligned with the brain of the monster. He had become accomplished at this maneuver, but this was a special challenge, for this was the brain of a fish. Only the most primitive aspects of his brain could align properly; there simply was no higher center in the fish's head to match his own.
Fortunately very little identification was required. The instructions for the manmer were uppermost in its limited mind, and Mym assimilated them before he got fairly into the rest of the creature's identity.
There was a grating in the bottom of the moat. When the water turned cloudy, that grating became permeable;
it was possible to swim through it. Of course Cutefoot would consume any person or creature who tried-except for the one who addressed him by his name. That one, and that one only, he would suffer to pass.
That sufficed. Mym withdrew from the manmer and splashed through the water, back to shore. It took the manmer a moment to realize that someone was there; then he acted. But Mym was already scrambling clear.
Werre was waiting for him. "Loyal steed, I must proceed alone from this point," Mym informed him. "Return to the Castle of War; I will summon you when my business here is done."
Werre neighed, wheeled about, and galloped away. That was one intelligent steed; the like hardly existed in the mortal realm. Mym realized that this was a significant part of what he liked about this office-the possession of truly competent accoutrements like the Sword and Warhorse.
Mym gazed into the moat. Yes, deep down he spied the grate; the water was
clear, so he could see it. All he had to do was wait until it clouded.
There was the sound of hooves. Mym glanced back, and saw a golden palomino approaching, bearing a golden cloaked rider.
That was Mars! Rather, it was a demon disguised as Mars; Mym was in a position to know that it was not the genuine Incarnation. He had better get past this moat before the demon arrived.
But the water remained clear. He could not afford to enter it yet. He could stop the manmer by speaking his name, but would not be able to pass the grate. He had to wait.
Another figure galloped up, just like the first. The parrot had been correct: there were demons all over. No wonder the Green Mother had gotten fed up with it. He had to move on through, before a crowd of them gathered and made that impossible. But still the water was clear.
The first demon arrived. "Ho, miscreant!" it cried challengingly. "Dare you assume my image? Begone, imposter!"
The sheer audacity of this challenge put Mym into an instant rage. Suddenly the Red Sword was in his hand and whistling through the air. The demon-horse's head flew off, then a segment of its neck, then the top half of the rider. As with Lila, there was not blood; it was as if the sections had been fashioned separately and set together, and now were falling apart again. The demon's upper body splashed into the moat and sank.
The water swirled as the manmer went after the fragment. The vicious teeth slashed out, cutting the demon substance into lesser fragments. The action moved down as the fragments sank; the manmer meant to consume it all. The muck of the bottom was stirred up, clouding the water.
"Ho, miscreant!" the second demon challenged.
Mym looked up. The thing was charging down on him, sword swinging. Behind it, three more were coming, all identical.
Damn them! Literally! Mym lifted the Sword-and paused.
The water of the moat was cloudy.
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