The Thief Who Wasn't There

by Michael McClung

  I summoned my magesight. It worked perfectly well. Too well, actually; it recognized everything of my surroundings as magical. The illumination was near-blinding. But I did notice the outline of a huge set of double doors in the wall opposite, and after some exploring with quickly freezing finger tips and my mundane sight, I managed to find the latch to one of the doors, concealed in the frieze that adorned every inch of wall. It was in an unpleasant part of one damned soul’s anatomy.

  I was hoping that, once I left the chamber, access to my well would return. I thought it at least possible that the hell gate simply absorbed any energy it could in order to maintain itself, knowing what I did about the nature of the eleven hells. I just hoped the same wasn’t true everywhere else.

  Outside was going to be brutally cold. If I was wrong about being able to access my well, I was going to freeze to death in minutes, rather than the hours it would take me inside the chamber. And if my memories of the afterlife were incorrect, I might well not even get the chance to freeze to death before being torn apart and devoured by demons.

  I took a deep breath, sending cold down into my lungs so sharp it cut like knives. I undid the latch, and put all my weight into forcing the giant door open.

  It was much, much colder than I had imagined. I felt my lungs seize up. I literally could not draw breath. The cold was such an absolute thing that my mind went into a sort of shock with it, unable to tell my muscles what to do. I fell to the hoarfrosted ground outside the gate house, convulsing in the cold. I was quickly losing even the ability to think. Mortal flesh was never meant for this demesne.

  Something. Something I needed to do. Amra’s face flitted across my mind’s eye. She was frowning, the scar that bisected her eyebrow and continued down her cheek making her look even more fierce.

  There was something I needed to do.

  My well.

  I reached for it, and it was there. With crumbling reason, I constructed a simple, nearly impossible spell, forcing my failing imagination to envision the change I needed.

  Not enough. Not clear enough. I did not believe it. I could not feel it. I dredged up a memory from the black ice of my mind. It didn’t want to come. I forced it to.

  The Hot Wells, on the border between Imria and Lucernia. A setting sun.

  More specific, damn you.

  The stench of horse sweat. The water bubbling up from the earth there, a little acrid. I remembered lowering myself into the rock-lined pool that unknown hands had constructed, skin at first shrieking in protest at the heat, then slowly coming to an accommodation with it.

  And as I remembered the Hot Wells, I pulled magic from my own well to recreate its effect on my body.

  The hoarfrost around me evaporated, and I lay on the black, cracked, frozen ground that was now exposed. I took a slow breath. Still bitterly cold, that air, but I could survive it. Slowly, shakily, I levered myself to my feet and slung my pack across my back, sweating in a place far colder than any mortal could survive without assistance. I looked around. Behind me, the bulk of the gate house, a gray tube rising up, up, so far that the eye could never follow. Around me, a featureless expanse of white. And above me, a dark sky from which hundreds, perhaps thousands of stars fell every minute, each in reality a damned soul.

  I was back. I refrained from rejoicing.

  I pulled the Glory Hand from my pack, hoping it hadn’t lost its efficacy by being soaked in the Senna and the Ose. I’d brought it along not for its illuminating property, but for the reason they were coveted by thieves everywhere: It could point the way to that which was to be stolen. If only I’d needed to steal Amra instead of rescuing her, I might have avoided having to capture Halfmoon.

  I slipped the chain around my neck and held it by its withered wrist.

  “Well, smelly, which way do I need to go to get to the Black Library?”

  Ring, middle and little finger curled inward towards the palm, leaving the bony forefinger rigid. Slowly it pointed itself down at the ground.

  “Very funny. Not being able to burrow my way through two hells, I’ll need an alternate route. Preferably via the Spike.”

  Slowly the forefinger lifted itself back to a level position, and then began twitching towards the left. I turned slowly in that direction until the twitching stopped and the finger went rigid.

  “Excellent. If I survive I’ll see about getting you a manicure.” I took the unpleasant thing off and dropped it in a coat pocket. Then I started walking in the direction it had indicated.

  I noticed, after a few minutes, that all the souls streaking across the sky seemed to be falling in that direction as well.

  Twenty-Six

  Imagine a dozen plates, less one, stacked one atop the other. They vary greatly in size and shape: Some are thin, delicate, small; hardly more than saucers, while others are great lumpy things, serving platters made for giants by a blind, drunk potter. Left this way, the stack would like as not fall.

  Now imagine that someone had managed to drive a skewer through the center of the stack, somehow spearing each plate without shattering any.

  This, in crude strokes, is the geography of the eleven hells. Each of them is a distinct reality, separate from all the others, and they are held together by the metaphysical force most commonly referred to as the Spike.

  The Spike was the only direct means of communication between the various hells that I knew of. I would have to make my way across Gholdoryth to the Spike, then travel down it past Khs to Thraxys.

  I wasn’t all that clear about just how I was going to do that. While I knew a fair amount about the individual hells, the Spike was something of a mystery. I knew that the demons used it as a highway in their eternal wars against each other. I knew that more than one god had traveled the Spike, for reasons various and generally frustrated. But I did not know much more than that.

  I’d died in Thagoth, and my soul had gone to Gholdoryth. I remembered the incredible cold, and I remembered a vast emptiness. Well, not emptiness, exactly. I have the distinct impression that I was one among a countless multitude that was all around me, and at the same time invisible.

  I had a very vague memory of endless falling stars, which seemed not to have changed in the intervening months, and the general impression that they were damned souls descending. That impression also had not changed.

  And I remember one other thing, if ‘remember’ is the correct term. I know that I have been somehow blocked from recalling in any meaningful fashion or even trying to speak of it. Who blocked it and why remained a mystery. The most I can say, or even remember clearly, is ‘something happened’. A memory of a memory.

  Unfortunately, I had no memory whatever of the Spike.

  As I walked through one hell on my way to another, I quickly realized being here as a damned soul had not been much of a preparation for being here in living flesh, if for no other reason than when you’re already dead and damned, you don’t bother much with keeping an eye out for things that can kill you.

  Gholdoryth was deceptively featureless. Hoarfrost, that delicate tracery of needle-like ice crystals, coated the ground to a depth of inches, both like and unlike snow, making the ground appear unendingly flat. In truth the ground undulated, sporting little rises and hollows that were invisible until you came upon them. The hoarfrost also concealed fissures in the ground, big enough to turn an ankle in, or even break an ankle in, if your luck was completely out.

  A walking stick would have been useful. Not having brought one, I was forced to slow my pace considerably. I cursed the fact and the delay, until I almost died. Would have died, if my pace had been even a little more quick.

  I put my food down on what looked to be just another patch of white, indistinguishable from the rest of the endless world of the stuff. My foot broke through the frost, and met no resistance below it. Instinctively I pulled myself back, stomach lurching as my balance teetered between going forward and going back. The hole I’d made in the frost grew, slowly at first, then faster.


  There was nothing below it but black void.

  Faster and faster the hoarfrost covering the pit lost cohesion, and uncountable needles of ice fell with the softest whisper, revealing a bottomless pit that had to be a quarter of a mile across.

  I did not stare into the void. I was afraid something might stare back. I turned away and called up a brightblade, making it long and thin and good for poking at the ground in front of me.

  I hadn’t done so before because I wanted to conserve as much power as I could, and just keeping myself from freezing was taxing enough. After seeing the pit, though, I didn’t begrudge the extra effort.

  #

  I walked for hours over the landscape of the damned, stopping occasionally to consult the glory hand. It always agreed with the soulfall in the sky, and I never had to correct my course.

  There was no sun, no moon, no stars other than the rain of souls overhead, and so no way to infer time. But soon enough I found myself thirsty, and soon enough after that hunger made its appearance. So I stopped, opened my pack, and took out what I had brought by way of provender.

  It wasn’t much.

  There had been no point in bringing along actual food. One of the things all the eleven hells held in common, a theme as it were, was corruption in all its forms. Moral, spiritual. Physical. As much as I might have liked a bundt cake or a roasted bird, it would have been pointless to pack them. Once-living things were especially susceptible. Within minutes of arriving, any provisions I’d brought along would have been reduced to a rotting, decayed soup. In Gholdoryth, a frozen, rotting, decayed soup. If I’d somehow been able to gag something down, it likely would have poisoned me.

  So instead I had a little vial filled with a reddish-white powder, procured by Fengal Daruvner over his objections. A drug, of course, from Far Thwyll. Lucernan slang named it ‘the Road.’ Horribly addictive and ultimately fatal. It made hellweed look positively medicinal. But the user felt no hunger or thirst, had boundless energy, and perhaps most importantly, clear thought. Right up until the moment he or she died of the stuff. And as it was a form of corruption itself, I thought it likely it would be more or less immune to hellish decay.

  I considered the vial for a while, and put it back in the pack. I wasn’t hungry, thirsty or tired enough yet.

  I’d never heard of anyone getting off the Road once they got on it. It was, apparently, a one-way thoroughfare.

  With a sigh I slung the pack back over my shoulder, summoned the brightblade again, and began to follow the river of stars once more.

  #

  At first I could make no sense of what I was seeing. I was tired, very tired, and my whole existence had become brightblade hissing against hoarfrost, step, and repeat ad nauseum. But slowly something began to intrude on my blurred consciousness; a vague thought that slowly crystallized into a realization.

  Something was different.

  I stopped and levered my gaze up off my feet, with an effort.

  Ahead of me, perhaps a hundred yards, was what looked like a hill. Then my perception changed, and it looked like nothing so much as the carapace of an enormous beetle, blue-black and slightly shiny, and devoid of the frost that covered absolutely everything else.

  It was unmoving.

  I just stood there for a while, swaying slightly and staring stupidly, letting the novelty of it wash over me.

  Then the unmoving beetle-hill moved.

  It exploded upward, massive carapace splitting and revealing a beetly set of wings. Wings that battered the air with such force that the back draft knocked me flat.

  The monster rose straight into the air, and suddenly stopped, despite the furious beat of its wings. I saw then that a massive chain pinned it to the ground. The lower end was lost to sight, but I could see that the upper end of the chain was fixed to a brutal, barbed spear the size of a ship’s mast, and that spear had been driven into the thorax of the beast.

  It turned and twisted wildly in the air, and then suddenly it was falling back to earth. I realized, after it was far too late to do anything about it, that its trajectory had me at its terminus. As it came down, the best reaction I could manage was to squint my eyes and throw an arm across my face.

  It landed with the force of an earthquake, not a dozen feet from me, and it was all I could do to keep my feet. It opened disturbing catlike eyes in an otherwise nightmarishly insectile face, and each eye was larger than my whole head.

  “You missed,” I said, and it blinked at me.

  Mage.

  “Demon.”

  What do you in Gholdoryth, clothed in flesh?

  “I’m taking a stroll. Why haven’t you departed along with the rest of your ilk?”

  My ilk hold grudges that span eons. I was left to face what comes.

  “What comes?”

  Ruin. Devastation. Unmaking. Oblivion.

  “Are you sure that wouldn’t be an improvement?”

  Perhaps. Would you choose it?

  “Probably not,” I conceded. “Well, I would wish you good day if there was any chance of day here. Or good.” I started to back away. I had no intention of turning my back on the thing.

  Let us strike a bargain, mage.

  “Did that once. It didn’t work out. I’ve sworn off bargaining with ruinous powers.”

  I admit to desperation. You, clothed in flesh and possessing some measure of power, can free me. I am at your mercy. Tell me your desire. I will grant its fulfillment, and then you will break my chain.

  “My desire? I have many. Chief among them at the moment is to get around you and continue on my way.”

  Free me. Or I will eat you.

  I was done talking to the thing. There was no way I could break its chain, even if I wanted to. It knew it, and hoped I did not. Making a snack of me might well give it enough power to break the bond on its own, however.

  “I’d tell you to go to hells, but…” and I shrugged, and turned away, and circumvented the demon, giving it a wide, wide berth.

  It beat the air and the ground with its massive body, raging and thrashing and threatening all the while.

  Eventually the sight and sound of it faded behind me, step by careful step.

  Twenty-Seven

  The eleven hells are for the damned, those who have lived life in such a vile, corrupt fashion as to deserve the punishment that they obviously eluded in life.

  That’s what virtually everyone says because that is what everyone is taught.

  It’s a lie.

  We put a sober, reasonable face on it, us mortals, but the fact is a certain portion of us go to hells not because it is the afterlife we have earned, exactly, but because of a bargain struck between the gods and demons millennia ago.

  Even I don’t truly understand the nature of the eleven hells, and I have spent considerable time studying them. Years, literally. But one thing, at least, became clear to me as I’d pieced together thousands of facts and legends and fragmented scraps of knowledge: without a steady stream of that immortal spark that is the mortal soul, all of the eleven hells would eventually wither and die. We are what makes their continued existence possible. It isn’t just the demons and daemons and daemonettes that feed on souls. It is their entire realm. We are the cord wood that feeds their fires, and without us, all the eleven hells would sputter out and die.

  So of course they battled the gods for control of the mortal realm.

  Legend has it that the gods and demons only ceased their killing of each other when it was agreed that a portion of souls would be consigned to the hells, a tithe of the damned. The demons were happy enough to get what they needed without conflict, and the gods were happy enough to give the demons a portion of such an infinitely renewable resource in return for peace, especially since it cost them nothing.

  Oh, they put a reasonable face on it. Judgment and all that. An incentive to do good while you live. And there are certainly enough evil fuckers dying at any given moment that deserve what they get. But it is a quota
system, not a system of justice. If evil ceased to be a force in the world, if every man and woman turned their backs on all sin and truly lived a blameless life, they’d have to scrape the false concept of eternal judgment off the afterlife and label it what it truly is—sacrifice. A tithe to keep the peace between the upper realms and the lower.

  To demons, we are food. To the gods, trade goods. Something to barter away when it profits them. Demons are without a doubt malicious, monstrous and evil, but it is worth bearing in mind that they devour souls because they have no choice in the matter. The gods, on the other hand, let them do it because it is, or was, convenient for them to allow it.

  I believe in the gods, certainly, living and dead. But I’d be damned if I worshiped any of them.

  By the time I arrived at the Spike, however, I was wishing there was some higher power that I could call on. Half a dozen times I’d stopped and taken out the little bottle of slow death that would allow me to keep going without the distress of thirst, hunger or exhaustion. Half a dozen times I put it back in the pack, unopened, and pushed myself forward through the unending hoarfrost.

  Then came the point where I stumbled and fell, and wasn’t even aware that I’d done so until I let go the spell that kept me from freezing to death. Suddenly, brutally, unignorably, I started to die. Terror and agony slapped me back to consciousness, and I recalled the spell in a panic. Then I levered my face up off the ground, my heart in my throat and my breath coming out in quick, animal pants. Slowly I made it to a sitting position.

  If I couldn’t stay awake, I was going to die. And I could no longer count on staying awake from one step to the next.

  With not a little regret, I reached out and dragged the pack towards me. I shoved a hand in, fingers questing blindly for the vial full of the Road. I was staring off into the distance, my eyes following the flight of all those damned souls, not really thinking anything like a rational thought.

  About the same time I found the vial, I noticed something else.

  In the distance there was a point where the shooting stars overhead simply vanished. And it wasn’t all that far away.