“I can manage the actual transfer to the new body easily enough,” Ischade said,
leading Mriga, Siveni, and the still slightly bewildered Harran away. “But you
will all of you owe me large favors….”
“Well repay them twice over,” Siveni said, sounding somewhat grim. It was
apparent she didn’t like the idea of owing anybody anything.
Harran was looking from one of them to the other. “You came to hell after me?”
Mriga looked with quiet joy at her lord and love as Ischade led them all back
toward the upper world. “They don’t call it that here,” she said. She was
beginning to understand why.
Behind them, Tyr had her ride-the first of many-and was off about her own
business when Death came home from work. The Queen of hell rose up to greet him
as always, went stately to the great doors, cool and grave and shining. There
her husband dropped the bare bones that were his old joke with her, leaned the
blade that is also an oar up against the dark doorsill, and went to her,
laughing and shedding this one of his many forms. There was none to see the dark
glory that hell’s Queen took in her arms, or the way her gravity dropped away in
the presence of that shadowy beauty which men dare not imagine; the way her
light kindled at his touch, like day in night’s embrace. They laughed together,
madly delighted as first-time lovers, as they always had been; as they always
would be.
“Dear heart,” said the Queen of hell, “a dog followed me home. Can I keep it?”
“This isn’t quite how I pictured hell,” Harran was saying dubiously.