gates. For that moment, lightning turned everything livid and froze everything
still. Thunder drowned out the cries of the damned inside. Then came a few
seconds of violet afterimages and ears ringing; then the darkness, in which by
the tamer light of Siveni’s spearhead they could see hell gates lying twisted
and shattered on the paving. Siveni picked up her spear, then swept through the
opening and past the wreckage, looking most satisfied.
“She does that rather well,” Ischade said as she and Mriga and Tyr followed
after.
“Yes, she always has been good at tearing things up,” Mriga said. She looked
over her shoulder at the gates and willed them back in place, as she’d done
earlier with Ischade’s wards. To her great distress, they didn’t reappear.
“We’re on other gods’ ground now,” Ischade said as they turned away from the
gates, moving past the shadows of empty animal pens and around the spur of the
great wall that sheltered the Bazaar. “Nearly all powers but theirs will be
muted here, I fear. If your otherself tries that stunt again inside, I suspect
she’ll be in for a surprise, for she was still outside hell while she did it
this time.”
Mriga nodded as they made their way through the streets that led to the Bazaar.
Almost everything was as it should be-the trash, the stink, the garbage in the
gutters, the crowds. But the dark shapes moving there had a look about them of
not caring where they were-an upsetting contrast to those stranded on the far
side of the river, who seemed to know quite well. Looking across the city for