On A Pale Horse (38 page)

They drew up at Luna's house. Zane was overflowing with his good news about the reprieve. He would survive until the hearing, and therefore she would, too, and after that—

The house was silent. The griffins were gone. Suddenly worried, Zane entered. Luna, too, was gone.

There was a note on the table. Zane picked it up. It was written in red cursive script, as if done in blood.

My Dear Death:

The fair moon is in My power. I cannot make her die, but I can make her wish she were dead. Terminate your strike, take your scheduled next client, and free Luna from her pain. She will go to Heaven directly, where you may join her at your convenience. Your most humble and obedient servant.

The Prince of Evil

I stared at the message, absorbing its every implication. Suddenly it burst into flame in his hand. He dropped it, but it never touched the floor. It was gone.

There was no doubt it was from Satan. The moment one ploy failed, the Lord of Flies tried another. Now that Zane was safe and knew it, Satan was striking through the woman he loved—in life as well as death. Trust the Devil to have no scruples!

Was Satan bluffing again? Zane dropped into the easy chair before Luna's television set, trying to clarify his whirling doubts. There was something—

Ah. He had it. “Satan, you forget that Luna is my next client. I will go there to rescue her from your clutches, not to send her to Eternity.” He looked at his orientation gems, fixing on Luna's location, for she remained the one he had to take before he could tune in on others.

The television set came on by itself. “A bye has been issued, Death,” Satan's face said from the screen. The Devil seemed to have an affinity for television. “Reset your watch, and it will orient on the next client.”

Zane brightened momentarily. “Luna has been spared?”

“No, merely put on hold. She will go unassisted when her time comes.”

When her time came. That would be the moment Zane ended his strike—except that he would balk again when he had to take her. What would Satan gain by this maneuver?

“She can't go unassisted,” Zane said. “She is now in balance. Only I can take her—and that I will not do.”

“She will not remain in balance,” Satan said.

Zane's suspicion returned full-force. “What do you mean?”

“My minions of the living realm will cause her to react, either in a good or an evil manner. Probably good, and that will tip her toward Heaven. Thus the assurance in My note. You need not attend her at all; merely resume your duties, and all else will take care of itself.”

Zane liked this less and less. “You will torture her—and make her better than she is now? I don't understand that.”

“Ponder it at leisure,” Satan said. “But do not ponder overlong. My esteemed associate. My Earthly minions are a brutal lot, already damned to Hell for good cause, who like torture for its own sake.”

The picture shifted to an Earthly chamber. There was Luna, tied to a chair, looking defiant. Three thuglike men were with her.

“You're on,” Satan's voice came. “Make your demon-stration.” The way he said it, the syllables “demon” projected from the final word.

One thug drew a bright knife from a sheath. “Right, Boss,” he said. He approached Luna.

Zane suffered an abrupt siege of intense rage and fear. They really were going to torture Luna! He wanted to mount Mortis and charge to the rescue, but couldn't tear himself away from the television screen. How could they change Luna's balance by such means? And how could he abate this horror when his own magic was gone? He might be secure from assassination himself, but he could not physically get past the barriers Satan's minions would have erected to bar his way to Luna. Satan was really putting the screws to him.

The thug brandished the knife before Luna's face. “Pray to Satan for succor,” he said.

“Satan can go succor himself!” she snapped defiantly,

The knife moved closer. “One prayer to Satan can save you a lot of pain.” The thug licked his lips.

Luna blanched, obviously frightened. “What do you want of me?”

“Only your prayer,” the thug said, leering.

“All Satan can have is my curse!”

Then she did a double take. “That's what you want! If I pray to Satan, I'll be damned by a trifling amount. If I curse him, I'll be blessed similarly. Either way, my soul nudges off balance, and I can die without Death's personal attendance.”

“So that's it!” Zane exclaimed. “You're trying to get her removed from my list entirely! When my strike ends, you can kill her immediately, and I can't balk you any more!”

“You are learning,” Satan agreed.

“It won't work! She has caught on to your plot!”

“We shall see.”

On the screen, the thug made a sudden motion with the knife, slicing it at Luna's front. It severed the material of her blouse. He sliced again, cutting away more blouse without touching her skin. In moments she had been stripped to the waist, her hands still bound behind her.

Now the thug put away his knife and fetched a black box with dials on one face and a pair of wires terminating in small disks. He extended the two extremities toward the tips of Luna's bare breasts.

“I wonder whether you appreciate the quality of pain that can be induced by electric shock,” Satan said conversationally to Zane. “No physical damage shows, and the intensity is finely tuned. She can be made to suffer a small amount—”

The electrodes touched Luna's nipples. She jumped, with an exclamation of pain.

“Pray to my Lord Satan,” the thug said. “Or curse Him. Then the treatment will stop.”

“—or a greater amount,” Satan continued.

The electrodes touched again. This time Luna's scream was piercing. Zane saw her whole body stiffen with the agony of the current passing through her chest.

When it stopped, her head fell forward, her face beaded with chill sweat, her lips so pale they almost disappeared. She was sobbing brokenly with reaction.

“You can free her from this, Death,” Satan said. “I know you do not like to inflict needless pain.”

Seeing her like that, Zane was tempted. He couldn't stand to watch the woman he loved being tortured. This was worse than the jaws of the Hot Smoke dragon, for this was deliberate cruelty, with no hope of unconsciousness or death. Unless he yielded...

“Speak to her, Death,” Satan said persuasively. “Tell her to curse Me, and go to Heaven for Eternity.” Zane hesitated. There was so much in the balance here! The thug touched Luna's breasts again. This time she tried not to scream, but an anguished sound squeaked past her constricted throat—the sort of sound one might hear from a mouse being run over by the tire of a truck. There was perspiration on all of her body that was exposed, and her eyes were staring, the whites showing too much.

“Luna!” Zane cried. “Curse Satan! Don't let them do this to you!”

Slowly her head turned, seeking his voice. She heard him. And Zane knew he had betrayed her—and the world.

Then she forced a smile like a grimace. “Oh, no, you don't. Father of Lies!” she gasped. “You can't fool me with Zane's voice! I know he would never urge me to betray his trust, no matter what!”

Zane felt as if the electrodes had been touched to his own flesh. She believed in him—but he had proved unworthy. He had broken, not she.

The thug extended the terrible electrodes again.

Zane squeezed his eyes shut. He had seen his mother suffering and had acted to free her from a life that had become intolerably burdensome. He had released a whole ward full of suffering old people. He had tried in every case to ameliorate the pain of death where death was necessary, and to eliminate suffering. His whole developing philosophy of death was as a legitimate end to pain. This time it was Luna who suffered, because of him—and he had no right to free her.

He heard her strangled scream. He kept his eyes closed, seeing an explosion of matchsticks. Formations of thought—and how could any of them resolve this crisis?

Suddenly the fifth pattern flashed in his imagination: -|||-. The symbol for intuitive thinking. His mind concentrated, assimilating it, hurdling the intuitive gap—

“Death be not stayed!” he cried.

He launched himself from the chair, charged outside, and vaulted onto his ready horse. “Go to Luna!” he cried, showing the orientation stones.

The stallion leaped into the sky. The globe of Earth whirled by beneath them. Then they arrived—on board an orbiting satellite, with normal gravity generated by magic. Naturally Satan was involved in space missions, to make sure no people escaped his power by fleeing planet Earth. But if the Prince of Evil's minions had thought to escape Death here, they were fools.

A thug appeared. He gaped. “A horse in space!” he exclaimed, amazed.

“More than that, ilk of Satan,” Zane said grimly.

“Hey, you can't pass here!” the thug protested. “Where's your Infernal clearance?”

Zane faced him. “Mortal, look at me,” he directed.

For the first time, the thug saw him as his office. The man's eyes frogged. “Death!”

“Now stand clear, lest you feel my touch,” Zane said.

But the thug recovered some backbone. “You won't kill me. You're on strike. If you take my soul, my Lord Satan can kill your woman.”

“You have placed your trust in the wrong power,” Zane said. He reached for the thug, who stiffened in fear but stood his ground like a half-bold cur.

Zane caught the man's soul and jerked it out of his body. The man collapsed. But the soul was only half out; it remained anchored in the host, as had the soul of the woman on life-support machinery. The thug was not dead, only separated from his soul partway for the moment.

Zane let go of the soul. It snapped elastically back into its host. The thug opened his eyes and stared dazedly up at the cloaked figure before him.

“Go and tell your fell master that Death is on his way and shall not be denied,” Zane said.

The man climbed weakly to his feet and staggered down the passage.

Zane followed more slowly. Soon three more thugs charged up to intercept him.

“Mortis,” Zane said.

The great Death horse, who had remained in the background as Zane faced the thug, stepped up. Zane remounted. “Trample any who do not give way,” Zane said coldly. “They have had fair warning.”

The stallion walked forward. His muscles rippled and his steel hooves gleamed. Death's eerie gaze shone down from above the massive animal. The sound of their tread became loud. Dazzled, the minions of Satan gave way, like rabbits before a wolf. The horse paced on.

One of the thugs drew a small machine gun from under his jacket. He pointed it at Zane. “Your magic's gone, Death,” he said. “Maybe we can't kill you, but we can riddle you with bullets. That will stop you!”

“Do that, cretin,” Zane said, and sat firmly while the Death steed continued the advance.

The gun fired a burst.

The bullets ricocheted from the Death cloak and tore into the walls and equipment of the space station. Zane remained unhurt.

The thug stared. “But—”

Zane stretched his right arm toward the man. He crooked his finger. The thug's soul began to draw from his body as if pulled on a string. “Do not believe all that the Father of Lies tells you,” Zane said. He released the soul, and the man fell back, gasping.

Mortis marched on down the central hall. Death rode regally onward, seeming invincible.

Two Hellhounds appeared. The first leaped for Zane head-on, jaws gaping, fire jetting.

Mortis' front leg jerked up. The metallic hoof caught the Hound in the head. The full force of the creature's momentum carried it into that hoof, crushing its skull. It dropped lifelessly.

The other circled and pounced from the side. Zane extended his left arm. The great jaws of the Hound took in the gloved hand and closed on the sleeve surrounding the elbow.

Zane turned his head slowly to look the monster in the eyes. “This becomes annoying,” he said and flexed his fingers in the Hound's throat, grasping the back of its tongue. “Begone, beast, or I will make my displeasure known.” He squeezed the tongue.

The creature stared. Then, slowly, it dissolved. Soon Zane was left with his arm extended, unhurt, in a cloud of smoke. His magic had been stronger than that of the monster.

They moved into the next chamber. There was Luna, still tied half-naked to the chair. “Death!” she cried. “Don't take me!”

Zane knew it was no plea of cowardice she made. She expected to live in agony—to foil Satan.

Zane dismounted as the three thugs attending Luna turned to face him, staring. “I have come to take you home—alive,” he said. “But first I have something to settle with these minions of the Evil One.” He drew the great scythe from its holster on the horse.

“No!” Luna cried. “Don't kill anyone! You mustn't—”

“Fear not. I shall merely hurt them a little, as they have hurt you,” Zane said, unfolding the terrible blade. “I will cut off their hands and feet, but they shall not die.” He smiled savagely. “No, they shall not die!”

The thugs, abruptly terrified, scrambled away.

A fourth man entered the chamber. “I think not,” he said.

Zane hardly glanced at him. “Death shall not be denied.” He hefted the scythe and took a step toward the three thugs, who cowered abjectly against the wall.

“Death shall have no dominion,” the stranger said. He pointed at the floor before Zane, and fire rose from it.

This was evidently a higher functionary. “I will rescue my love, though Hell bar the way.” Zane swept the blade of the scythe through the flames, and they were cut off like so many weeds. In a moment they died.

The man made a circle in the air with one finger. The space inside the circle fell out like cut paper, leaving a window into a horrendous furnace. “Hell does bar the way. Do not tamper with things you do not understand.”

Zane made a circle with his own left arm, flinging a length of his cape over the window, stifling it until it disappeared. “Who the devil are you to oppose me with such foolish tricks and to slight my intelligence?” He shifted the blade of the scythe meaningfully. “The Devil himself shall not interfere with Death any more.”