Pages of Pain p-1 Read online

  "Lock that bone-box, berk!" hissed Cwaino, who was marching along outside the chair box. "In this part of town, sniveling draws bloodblades like flashing gold draws glitter girls."

  "I do not snivel. As for your bloodblades, let them come. I would welcome the fight." The Amnesian Hero glared at the supplicants ahead, wondering how many coins it would cost to declare an Emergency Priority to bypass them. "Is no place in Sigil free of these monstrous lines?"

  Cwaino squinted at the wretched column. "Bar that. If you wait, I wait-and I'm not staying down here a minute longer than I need to."

  The assertion seemed bold for a mere guard, but the Amnesian Hero would be glad to avoid paying more bribes. He was running low on gold, and he hated nothing more than relying on the good will of others for his wine.

  As the Thrasson's procession approached the line of supplicants, the four Mercykillers moved forward to shove people out of the way. The petitioners grudgingly yielded to the rough treatment, pressing aside just far enough to let the sedan chair pass. Most were humans, but the Amnesian Hero also saw bariaur, elves, dwarves, ogres, khaasta, githzerai, and a few other races he had never before encountered – at least that he could recall. All had gaunt, haunted faces wearied by hunger and despair, and the soiled rags hanging from their bony shoulders hardly resembled the bejeweled foppery of most royal supplicants.

  The Thrasson saw teary-eyed women supporting drooling elders whose glassy eyes were looking somewhere far beyond. He saw lonely naked orphans with swollen bellies and skin hanging loose on their crooked bones. He saw burly guards holding the leashes of wild-faced men with shackled hands, he saw coughing, quivering women trembling with age and flushed with fever, but nowhere did he see anyone arrayed in what Madame Mok called "the proper style." Aside from his own, there were no sedan chairs, no lantern boys or guards, not even a single figure dressed in a cloak decent enough to hang in a shepherd's hut.

  Cwalno reached up to draw the chair curtain closed.

  The Thrasson grabbed the cloth and held it open. "What do you hope to hide, Cwalno? I've already seen that those poor wretches hardly look like royal supplicants."

  Cwalno appeared vaguely uncomfortable, but chuckled grimly. "Who else would they be?" He shoved aside a babbling madman whose handler had dropped the leash. "You can't think a sane man would – er, sony. That must be why Poseidon sent you."

  The Amnesian Hero locked gazes with the Mercykiller. "I hope you are not trying to say that I am demented."

  Cwalno sneered, while at the same time hastening to shake his head as though he had been terribly misunderstood. "A cutter like yourself? 'Course not!" There was a mocking tone to his voice. "I'm only talking about your condition. Poseidon wouldn't send no blood with a memory to deliver his present. Any berk who can remember half what he's heard about the Lady of Pain would sooner jump into the Abyss than stand face-to-face with her."

  The Amnesian Hero sat back and nodded thoughtfully. Despite Cwalno's condescending manner, there was truth in what he said. The King of Seas was by nature a selfish god, hardly the type to restore a mortal's lost memories in return for a simple errand like delivering a gift. Since accepting the amphora, the Thrasson had been expecting to run into some such trouble. Now that he finally had some idea of its nature, he was almost relieved.

  "If the Lady is so terrible to face, why are all these people waiting to see her?" As the Amnesian Hero studied the throng of dismal supplicants, it occurred to him they all had an abundance of one thing. "Do the wretches not fear the Lady because of the gifts they bring her?"

  Cwalno eyed the derelicts with a disdainful smirk. "And what could the Lady want from these sods?"

  "Their suffering, of course! That's why she is called the Lady of Pain, is it not?"

  Cwalno, sneered, but was careful to neither nod his head nor shake it. "You'll see soon enough, Thrasson."

  The Mercykiller pointed forward, where his three crowd-breaking companions had just pushed through into a large open square. A dozen men in cloaks of bright, spangled colors were cavorting in the space, leaping and tumbling and springing off their hands both forward and backward, all the while voicing a dismal, deep-throated dirge with no words the Amnesian Hero could identify.

  On the far side of the square stood the yawning mouth of the Gatehouse's central tower. There were no guards in the area other than the strange acrobats, yet the crowd made no effort to creep forward. They seemed entirely resigned to their wait. From them, even the frantic energy of the tumblers drew no more than gray, disinterested stares.

  The scene kindled a feeling of sad inevitability in the Amnesian Hero. The sensation had a vague familiarity that he sometimes experienced in moments of empathy, as though sensing the emotions of others could trigger the sentimental dregs of his own lost history. The Thrasson made no effort to call forth the memory which stirred the emotion; a thousand times he had tried to fish his past from such residues, and never did he draw up more than frustration and biting despair.

  The Mercykillers led the procession straight across the square, marching through the acrobats' performance without a word of apology. The intrusion bothered no one, least of all the tumblers, who incorporated it into their act by doing handsprings between the armored guards and somersaults under the chair box. One exceptionally lithe performer leaped high over the forward bearers to come down, light as a feather, on the support shafts before the chair box. He squatted there like a frog with red mad eyes, glaring at the Thrasson and singing in a high, jittery voice:

  "O tower not of ivory, but builded

  By hands that reach heaven from hell;

  O mystical rose of the mire,

  O house not of gold but of gain,

  O house of unquenchable fire,

  Our Lady of Pain!"

  The Amnesian Hero leaned forward, carefully considering the words of the mad-eyed acrobat. In the Thrasson's experience, the accomplishment of any great feat required the solving of a riddle, and the fellow's strange words were nothing if not an enigma. He weighed each element of the song: a tower built by hands that stretched from the Lower Planes to the Upper, a magic rose growing in slime, a house of gain and unquenchable fire.

  "Of course!" The Thrasson peered past the acrobat, noting the overall shape of the Gatehouse. The central tower was clearly a crowned head. The side wings could be taken for arms, while the comer towers bore a superficial resemblance to closed fists. "The Gatehouse is the Lady of Pain!" The acrobat cackled and bobbed his head, singing:

  "I have passed from the outermost portal

  To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;

  What care though the service be mortal?

  O our Lady of Torture, what care?

  All thine the last wine that I pour is,

  The last in the chalice we drain."

  This riddle was even simpler than the last, divided as it was into two-line sections, and the Amnesian Hero was almost disappointed in the answer.

  "Often have I been warned to abandon hope before entering some dank place. Many times has someone assured me I would find only anguish inside, or warned me the place's terrible occupant would pour my lifeblood upon the stones. Yet, it is always I that return to the light, and it is always my sword that is smeared with steaming black gore." The Thrasson glanced past the acrobat and saw that they had nearly reached the looming bars of the portcullis. "You must do better than that to frighten the Amnesian Hero."

  The acrobat smiled grimly and opened his mouth to speak again-then the shaft of Cwalno's glaive caught him in the head and sent him flying.

  "That's enough blather, addle-cove!" The Mercykiller rolled his eyes and turned to the Amnesian Hero. "Pay him no attention. They do that to every poor sod we bring down here. It means nothing."

  Quietly seething at his guard for interrupting the third riddle, the Amnesian Hero watched the acrobat gather himself up. "Everything means something."

  "Not down here it don't."

  The Amnesian Hero looked fo
rward and saw that they had reached the jaws of the great gate tower. He expected the Mercykillers to stop at the threshold and send him into the bleak place alone, but they did not hesitate to escort him inside. The Thrasson found himself in a circular courtyard surrounded by high, gloomy walls. An enormous mosaic of gray-shaded basalt covered the floor, so large that the Thrasson could determine only that the pattern represented some twisted conglomeration of bones. A handful of brightly-cloaked attendants and despairing supplicants stood scattered along the curving walls, their voices filling the area with a gentle murmur of sobbing and softly uttered words of comfort.

  Halfway across the circle, the huge portcullis divided the courtyard in two. The bars looked more enormous than ever, descending from a vaulted half-ceiling high overhead to rest inside a set of immense lock wells. The Thrasson could not imagine the creature the gate was meant to keep out, but it seemed clear enough that the present occupants never raised the portcullis. The lock wells were so full of rust and corrosion that a halo of orange crust covered the floor around the base of each bar.

  The Amnesian Hero's procession passed through the gate without having to tighten its formation. The back half of the courtyard, covered as it was by a second half-ceiling, was even gloomier than the front. The square eyes of dozens of candle-lit windows peered out from the depths of the citadel, barely illuminating dozens of brown stains that trailed down the walls from a leaky roof. The steady drone of solemn voices, frequently punctuated by an echoing scream from some place deeper in the building, filled the air with a grating hum.

  As the eyes of the Amnesian Hero adjusted to the dim light, he saw that this area was far more crowded than the front half of the courtyard. To his left, a long line of petitioners waited before an iron door, patiently allowing a colorfully dressed attendant to sprinkle powder over their filthy heads. In the back of the enclave, a spangle-cloaked dwarf kneeled before another iron door. He was wailing madly and, despite the efforts of two escorts to restrain him, beating himself fiercely about the head. A short distance away, another pair of burly attendants had the arms of a lithe, black-caped woman stretched taut between them. She seemed to be glaring at a gentle-looking elf who stood a safe distance away, addressing her in a voice of honey and holding his palms spread open. Behind him, a third iron door led deeper into the palace.

  Cwalno led the Amnesian Hero's procession past this group, then stopped. Fifteen paces ahead, before yet another iron door, stood a second elf who bore a brotherly resemblance to the first one. Along with a small group of brightly cloaked attendants, he was studying a dazed man with the tip of a tongue showing at the comer of his mouth.

  Cwalno turned to the Amnesian Hero. "I'll arrange an audience with the Lady of Pain. You wait here."

  After the Amnesian Hero nodded his assent, Cwalno marched over to the second elf's group and shouldered past the brightly cloaked attendants. The Thrasson watched until the Mercykiller began to whisper into the elf's ear, then turned his gaze upon the black-caped woman being restrained near his sedan chair.

  It is a ploy, of course. While he watches the woman, the Amnesian Hero is listening to every word Cwalno says. The Mercykiller does not realize this; only I know that the Thrasson is a Hunter, gifted by the gods with those ugly little ears that can hear the spider in the comer sighing.

  "Madame Mok's sent a special barmy for you, Tyvold." The Mercykiller points at the sedan chair, but the Amnesian Hero, cunning as always, pretends not to notice. He continues to stare at the black-caped woman, as though he finds her more interesting than any discussion about his fate. "Sod claims he can't remember his own name."

  Tyvold sneers and does not look toward the Amnesian Hero. "Did he wait in the Salvation Line?"

  "What do you think? I'm going to camp down here twenty days?"

  Tyvold shrugs. "That is your choice, of course." He turns away from Cwalno. "This isn't the Prison, you know. Mercykillers have to wait like everyone else."

  "That so?" Cwalno demands. "And maybe Factol Lhar wants to show me permits for those Bleak Cabal soup houses springing up all over the city? If every letter ain't just right, you can be sure he won't have to wait in line at our place."

  Tyvold's kindly features stiffen into a mask of anger. He knows it is a sign of inner deficiency for a high-up in the Bleak Cabal to show irritation-it suggests that he himself is nearing readiness for the Grim Retreat-but the elf cannot help it. The Mercykillers, with their blind devotion to "justice" and "order," are the worst of the Deluded. Not only do they think the multiverse has meaning, they are convinced it is their duty to impose that meaning on everyone else.

  Of course, the fact is that nothing has meaning, especially the multiverse. But try telling that to a Mercykiller, and you'll spend the next ten years on the Racks of Enlightenment with a self-renewing charge of Mockery. By the time you come out, you'll be as mad as Cwalno and his kind. Better not to argue. Quarreling implies meaning, and, as Factor of the Redeemable Wing of the Gatehouse's Asylum, Tyvold has seen enough madmen to know what comes of allowing meaning to creep into one's mind. The elf waves the barmy before him into the care of two assistants, then turns to the Mercykiller.

  "Very well, Cwalno. Describe your ward's condition. By itself, a simple memory lapse hardly entitles him to a cell in the Asylum."

  "Don't you worry. He's barmy enough. To start with, he's looking for the Lady of Pain. Says he's got a gift for her from Poseidon."

  "Truly? That is interesting." For the first time, the Factor of the Redeemable looks in the newcomer's direction. "Do continue."

  There can be no doubt that the Amnesian Hero finds it difficult to hide his rage as Cwalno, hardly able to stifle his laughter, describes how Madame Mok tricked the Thrasson into seeking the Lady of Pain at the Gatehouse. Even when the Mercykiller snickers out an account of how she convinced him to hire a sedan chair and a full escort for the journey, the Amnesian Hero shows no sign of the fury so surely eating at his stomach. He is too clever for that. Instead, as Cwalno chuckles at how his captive suggested the wretches outside have come to offer their suffering to the Lady of Pain, the Thrasson betrays no hint that he is listening with his ugly little ears. He rests his chin on his hand and continues to stare at the black-caped woman, and so complete is his control that his cheeks do not even flush with anger.

  From what the Amnesian Hero could see of her shadowy face, the woman's features were slender and winsome, not quite sharp enough to be those of an elf. She had left her black hair hanging loose and long over her shoulders, like a rippling black penumbra that might have flowed from the Abyss itself. With huge dark eyes and a button nose over a cupid's bow mouth, she was possessed of a dusky beauty that seemed to mock cuteness more than celebrate it.

  When the woman's gaze swung toward the Amnesian Hero, the darkness that masked her face seemed to move with her head. Whatever was casting the shadow, the Thrasson realized, it was not anything in Sigil. The woman was probably a tiefling, a child borne to a human and – well, to something else; even in Arborea, the Amnesian Hero had learned better than to ask. Although no two tieflings were alike, they were all quick to anger and rather touchy about their heritage.

  "What do you look at, pretty boy? You want to make kiss with me?" The woman puckered her lips and made smacking sounds. "Last chance before they lock us up, yes?"

  The tiefling's keeper stepped closer to her. "Jayk, that's enough. Isn't this what landed you here in the first place?"

  Jayk shrugged indifferently, but kept her huge eyes fixed on the Amnesian Hero. "What matter if I make kiss with him, Tessali? He is dead already, yes?"

  "Were I you," said the Thrasson, "I would not be so certain."

  The Amnesian Hero sprang from his sedan chair and landed light as a cinder on the gray floor, then started toward the tiefling. His Mercykiller escorts moved to block his way, but he pushed past them with hardly a glance. In the performance of any great feat, the champion always had to face some trial of character or intellect, and
there was much about Jayk's manner to suggest she embodied such a test.

  "I have fought the Hydra of Thrassos and wrestled the Hebron Crocodile and harried the Abudrian Dragons and battled many more foes too numerous to name, and always have I been the one who departs the bloody fray standing and alive."

  "Or so thought you." Jayk gave him a coy smile, then ran her dark gaze down his armored body. "Pity for a man like you to think he is alive." She turned to Tessali and asked, "A sad, sad delusion, is it not?"

  The Amnesian Hero frowned, but continued toward the tiefling. Arborea was a place of passion and vigor, where life was an eternal celebration and death its inevitable but loathsome end. He had never met someone who called living a sad delusion, and he could not decide whether she belonged to some strange faction of death worshipers or was only suffering from some plane-touched dementia.

  The tiefling's keeper, Tessali, grasped the Thrasson's arm. "You mustn't get too near. She's one of the-"

  The Amnesian Hero shook free of the elf's hand. "If life is a delusion, then it is not a sad one." He continued to stare at Jayk. "And, if you will be kind enough to repeat the Third Riddle of the Gatehouse, I hope to remain deluded even after I have seen the Lady of Pain."

  Jayk threw back her head and laughed, a bony, fiendish rattle that drew a chill up the Thrasson's spine. He did not flinch or back away.

  "The Third Riddle of the Gatehouse?" Jayk cackled. "The dead go in and the dead go out, and still they are as barmy as you! Now we make kiss, yes?"

  The Amnesian Hero realized instantly the tiefling's riddle, lacking the poetic form of the first two, was not the one he sought. Still, he hesitated before replying, trying to decide whether the test was to show his courage by kissing Jayk, or demonstrate his resolve by resisting the temptation.

  Taking advantage of the pause, Tessali slipped between the Amnesian Hero and the tiefling. "Stay back! She's one of the Menacing Mad."