On A Pale Horse (17 page)

"One time when I was visiting and she saw the nurses were away, she whispered to me the truth. She was hurting physically and mentally and emotionally, she felt degraded by all the paraphernalia, and she just wanted to die before she ran down her estate entirely with the medical bills, so I would have something to inherit. I didn't tell her that all the money was already gone and that the debt was mounting horrendously; even her life insurance would hardly cover it. She begged me to make them let her die so she could be in peace at last. She had come to hate life. She was in such misery and so urgent about it that I promised. Then she lapsed into more hallucinations—I think she was reliving something that happened a long time ago, in her childhood—and talked of picking flowers and getting stung by a bee—and I had to go. I knew the doctors would never let her die in peace; it was part of their code to make a patient suffer as long as humanly possible. So I bought a penny curse—it was all I could afford—and set it on the heart machine where it wouldn't be seen and left. Two hours later I had the call: she was dead because of equipment failure.

“The hospital thought it was at fault and offered to settle out of court, and I let them think that, because it eased the medical bill considerably. But I knew I had killed my mother and that my soul was damned. I tried to pay off the remaining bill by gambling, hoping to multiply the money I was supposed to use for those debts, but I lost it all and tried to steal from my employer to gamble into enough to square everything, but I was caught, so I lost my job and had still more sin on my soul and debts on my account. I skipped town, went to Kilvarough, set up a new identity, and sort of scraped along for several years with my guilt and grief, still hoping for some source of money to square things, hoping maybe to marry money, until this other business—”

He stopped. “I think I've said too much.”

Luna was watching him intently. “That Truthstone never flickered.”

“Why should it?” Zane asked, glancing at the gem in his hand. “This is the gutter of my life. I have had nightmares about it, until the dreams become more real than reality, and I try to wash off the blood on my arm or to blind myself so I can no longer see my mother's face as she died.”

“But you weren't there when she died!”

“In my dreams I was there.” Zane rubbed his arm, feeling the blood again, the horrible dream-blood.

“Your mother—it was a mercy killing.”

“Killing is a sin. I know that now; I knew it then. All else is rationalization.”

“That's not the way you were judging me a moment ago.”

“Why should I judge you? I hardly know you.”

Luna set down her stones, then took his stones and put them away. “I think you have earned the privilege of making my acquaintance, Zane. Come this way.”

She showed him into what appeared to be an artist's studio. There were a number of professional paintings and several half-finished ones on easels. The subjects were ordinary people, places, and things—but the treatment was extraordinary. Each outline was fuzzed by a faint wash of color, as if each person stood within his own private fog. “What do you make of this?” Luna asked.

Zane felt a growing excitement as he gazed at the paintings. “These are yours?”

“My father wanted me to be an artist,” she said.

“Now I know why he brought me to you!”

Again she cocked her head, prettily. “Why?”

“He surely knew my interest! You said he must have researched me and known a lot about me. And he arranged to die, at half-and-half, when I was Death. He could have lived longer if he had wanted to, couldn't he?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “He told me the timing was important, but he wouldn't say why.”

“To summon me, not the prior Death! Because I have artistic aspirations. I am an aural photographer—or was, or tried to be, before I became Death. I really didn't have the proper equipment. That's why I needed money right then—but that's another dull story.”

“You recognize my theme?” she asked, brightening.

“Of course I recognize it! I've been photographing auras all my life! Most people can't see them, but I can, with my equipment, and now I know you can. Your paintings are beautiful! I never was able to get the full effect on film. When I tried to sell my pictures, the best offers I got were from the porn publishers, because my technique fuzzed out the clothing of women, but that wasn't the point at all.”

“Not the point at all,” she concurred. “But this still doesn't add up. If my father knew about you, he could have invited you to visit, or simply conjured you here, and dosed you with a spell of amnesia if not satisfied. He hardly needed to die.”

Zane's revelation collapsed. “That's right! But he must have had some reason.”

“He must have,” she agreed soberly. “He was a most intelligent and sensible man. There is obviously more here than we know.”

“You—you said you have gone into black magic. Could you find out?”

Luna considered. “I have learned to use many of the stones my father crafted. Some do enable the user to ascertain the motives of others. But black magic is the power of Satan, and Satan knows when any of it is used. I don't want his baleful eye on me unless there is no other way.”

“Don't you have any white-magic stones?”

“The beatific eye of God is on white magic. I'm not sure I want that gaze either. Not when I'm investigating my father, whose Eternal fate remains uncertain.”

“What's the difference, really? Isn't magic the same, whether it's black or white?”

“The power is the same, but the aspect differs. Magic is like magnetism, with a white pole and a black pole. If you orient on the white pole, you are aligning with God; the black pole draws you to Satan.”

“Then why doesn't everyone stick to white magic?”

“Only good people can do that. Evil people relate more to the black pole. It's—this is not exact, of course, as the science of magic is as complex as the magic of electronics—it's like traveling past a mountain. The white pole is at the apex, and it is an exhilarating height, but it takes a lot of work and few missteps to ascend to it. The black pole is at the nadir, and it is easy to walk downhill; sometimes you can just sit down and slide or roll and, if you fall, you can get there very fast indeed. If you don't pay attention to where you're going, you'll tend to go down, because it is the course of least resistance. Since the average person has only the vaguest notion where he is going and tends to shut out awareness of the consequence of evil, he inevitably drifts downward. There is much more space at the base of the mountain than at the peak! Even those of us who know the situation can find ourselves in difficulty, as you did when you had to use bad means to do something good for your mother. When I became evil, white magic lost its effectiveness, while black magic became proportionately stronger. Remember the magnetic poles: the closer you get to one, the more strongly it attracts. So it is much harder for an evil person to become good than for a good person to stay good. Now I can accomplish much more through the black.”

“But if black magic draws you to Satan—”

“Precisely. Evil facilitates evil, accelerating the slide. I don't dare use any more black magic, if I want to achieve eventual salvation. I'm almost too deep already.”

“So you can't use magic to find out what your father really wanted.”

“I already know that—to introduce the two of us to each other. I don't know why.”

Zane nodded agreement. “It's a puzzle. Let's meet again; maybe we can figure it out.”

She smiled. “Yes. I think we understand each other better now. We have plumbed the depths of each other's evil and not been repelled.”

How true that was! Zane had told no one before of his guilty secret of murder and he was sure Luna had not let any other person know hers. As it had turned out, there was a certain similarity in those secrets, for each of them had descended into evil in order to help a respected parent. No, there would not be condemnation from either. That, and the aural art, showed affinity between them. Still, it did not seem to warrant the extraordinary measure the Magician had taken in sacrificing his own life.

Zane turned to leave. “I need to get back to my business.”

She looked up at him, her gray eyes seeming larger and brighter than before, like moons. But it was no longer her physical beauty he saw so much as the character of a person who had sacrificed herself for a parent. “Yes, of course. Life is art, and your art is now in your office. When do you wish to visit again?”

“I'm hardly aware of the calendar now. I can't tell how crowded my schedule will be. Does it have to be a set date?”

“Naturally not! Come when you can. I will be here.”

She glided close and kissed him.

Zane found himself in the Death mobile, driving out of town, before he was able to focus on the significance of that abrupt act. He had held his emotion in abeyance during their discussion, uncertain whether he would be seeing Luna again. She was, after all, hardly the type of woman Angelica was—well, no, he had to qualify that, for now Angelica was misty in memory, while Luna was preternaturally clear, as if outlined by some Divine retouching pen. And if Luna was no pristine creature, she certainly had more character than he suspected the other woman had.

Luna's very impurities matched his. How could a soiled, sullied person like him expect to win the love of an angel? Only a fallen angel could be within his grasp! Luna's artistry attracted him, for it was exactly the talent he had tried to evoke in himself without sufficient success—and her abrupt kiss had stunned him, because now she knew him for what he was—a man who had gambled and embezzled and killed his mother—yet found him worthy of this mark of favor. True, she had offered him more than that, and he could have used the Love stone to compel her feeling as well as her physical cooperation, but he had never been one to seek the favor of a woman under duress. He wanted to be loved for himself alone, unworthy as he knew himself to be, and the significance of the kiss was the suggestion that this was possible. Still, that business with the demon—he had heard horrendous things about the sexual appetites of demons and the uses to which they put acquiescent or unacquiescent girls. Especially pretty girls. Some were no longer pretty, after the demons finished with them. To fall into the power of a demon was to be ravaged in more than the physical sense. Luna had not suffered loss of beauty, however.

Zane punched his watch. Six minutes on the countdown. He had a client to attend to.

The Death car phased south, emerging in dense jungle. The rutted mud trail here was too difficult for the mechanical vehicle, so it shifted to the stallion Mortis and trotted readily through the steamy growth.

“Halt!” someone cried in Spanish, the translation sounding in Zane's left ear. He looked around and spied a camouflaged soldier whose rifle was pointed menacingly.

Zane halted, drawing cloak and hood close about him, just in case. “Where is this?”

“I'll ask the questions!” the soldier snapped. “Who are you and what is your business?”

Should he tell the truth? Zane knew that could complicate things. Yet he was increasingly disinclined to deal in falsehood for any reason. “I am Death, come to collect a soul.”

“Oh. Yes, sir,” the soldier said, snapping to attention.

Surely he had not heard what Zane had said! The words must have come across as the recognition code for a high officer of this army. Well, if that was the way of it, he would play the part, as he didn't want to get lost in a region of violence. “Identify yourself and your mission,” Zane said curtly.

“Sir, I am Fernando of the Loyal Niqueldimea Army, on patrol to rout out the Seventh Communist renegades.”

Zane remembered now: Niqueldimea was a banana republic, where guerrilla infiltration had been occurring for some years as the Communists sought to topple its unpopular autocratic government. Naturally there would be many killings here, and some would require Death's personal service.

His watch showed thirty seconds. “Carry on, Fernando,” he said, and urged Mortis on toward the rendezvous.

In a moment he entered a rather pretty jungle clearing. But as he did so, small-arms fire erupted. A bullet bounced off his impervious cloak. There was a scream beside him, and a Niqueldimean soldier jumped up, stiffened, and spun to the ground. Zane needed only a glimpse before the man was buried in the brush below to see that the right side of his head was gone. He was definitely dead—in fact, it was amazing that he had been able to jump—but this was not Zane's client. This soldier could make it to Eternity on his own.

More government soldiers charged into the clearing, intent on obliterating the sniper. The ground gave way under three of them, and they fell, screaming, into a pit. Yet the surface of the ground remained unbroken. Zane realized that this trap was concealed by a spell of illusion. In one sense, illusion wasn't real, but it could be just as deadly as tangible magic. Enchantment was countering bullets quite effectively.

Zane looked at his orientation stone. His client was in that pit, it seemed. Zane dismounted and stepped forward cautiously, following his gem-arrow as his watch countdown swung to zero.

His foot found the edge. He squatted, then sat, putting his feet down into the invisible hole, leaning forward, and getting his head inside the spelled region. Now he could see reality.

It wasn't pretty. It was a large, open cavity, with a dozen sharpened wooden stakes set upright in the bottom. The three soldiers were skewered on these. Two were dead, the third dying. The third was his client.

Zane slid carefully down the steep side of the pit and landed on his feet. This required only a few seconds, but in that time he became aware how the man was suffering.

The soldier had somehow turned as he fell, and the cruel spike had penetrated his back and emerged from the side of his abdomen. He had been impaled excruciatingly, his head and feet dangling down to the ground. His blood was hardly flowing; the stake filled the puncture.

Zane tried to retch, but clamped his mouth shut. He lurched across and hooked out the soldier's soul, relieving him of his agony. Then he turned and leaned against the pit wall, breathing in long, shuddering efforts.