Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

The day was leaning toward noon; the sun bumed down and the streets stank under it. What did I ever see in this foul place? he wondered as he went. The answer was plain enough; Siveni’s priesthood, which had been all the life he wanted.

But then the priesthood was banished as Molin Torchholder went systematically about making the smaller Ilsig gods unwelcome. Then he had started making the best of things, working with the Stepsons, and with their poor replacements, until the real ones came down on the stand-ins’ barracks and slaughtered them wholesale.

And Harran with them.

Alive again now, in a new body, he had rather hoped that the memory of being dead would go away. Instead it got stronger. Images of hell laid themselves pale and chill over daylight Sanctuary-the cold-smoking river, the silences broken only by the abstracted moaning of the sleepwalking damned. More remotely, through the bond he shared with Siveni and Mriga, and even with Tyr, he saw things he had never seen himself. The great black pile of the palace of hell’s rulers; hell’s gate burst inward by a spear that sizzled with lightnings;

Ischade the terrible, coolly leading them down the path into darkness; Tyr flying in splendid rage at the throat of a monster ten times her size. And one image, brief but clear, of the cold black marble floor of that dark palace seen as if by one who groveled upon it… while just out of eyeshot, Siveni’s bright helm rolled on the floor where it had slipped off her as she bowed her proud power down, begging for Harran’s life.