The Pharoah Contract

On the stage, plinths shot high, carrying Bhas and Menk upward out of the light of the torches, giving the illusion that Thethri and Hashupit were falling. Their bodies, supported by some unseen means, twisted and fluttered in the draft of a wind machine below the stage. In a moment they had “fallen” to the level of the first steams of Hell, represented by colored veils released into the blast. These veils were rippled by rising floods of darker and darker color as the two fell deeper and deeper into Hell — pure white yellowing gradually into pale sienna, darkening into the crimson of arterial blood, the purple of stained steel, and finally, the deepest black. Just before the torches guttered to their dimmest, while Thethri went windmilling on down to disappear into the depths of the stage, the goddess was struck by a ledge that slammed up to meet her. Her body bounded high, limbs loose, then fell back into a motionless heap.

Ruiz hoped fervently that the impact had killed her, or at least rendered her unconscious. He looked on, horrified, as she began to stir feebly on the stone.

Then she jerked, and her eyes bulged, and her face twisted out of that mask of unnatural beauty into the face of an ordinary woman in agony. She began to scream, but the sound was choked by the thorny leafless stem that burst from her mouth. Her body shook in the final moments; then the vines thrust through her abdomen with small geysers of blood.

She lay still, finally. The vines writhed upward and burst into flower, covering the corpse with great, white, sweet-scented double blooms.

Ruiz was shaken. The phoenix had been executed with a stiletto vine, an ephemeral species that grew on the upper slopes of Hell, seeds of which could be won only by slave Helldivers.

The lights came up and revealed the senior conjuror standing above the corpse of the phoenix, flanked by his two fellow performers. He began the traditional coda.

“And so the goddess Hashupit met her doom in Hell. But by her sacrifice we are spared Famine, and by her sacrifice the power of the remaining two of the Awful Three is diminished, so that our lives are bearable. Never must we forget that Thethri is climbing the walls of Hell, and will someday return, if the priests watching at the Worldwall are not vigilant.”

The three performers bowed, and Ruiz saw a curious emotion in their eyes. He understood suddenly and strongly that these men expected translation to the Land of Reward. They had given the performance of their lives, the culmination of all their craft and faith, and they knew it. Only the frail magician who’d played Thethri seemed to feel any doubt that he wanted his reward, though emotion was hard to read in the tattooed wilderness of his face.

Ruiz’s staff buzzed insistently. He fought his way through the last layer of the silent crowd.

“As Hashupit herself will rise one day, for not even death is forever,” the conjuror finished, as Ruiz flung himself onto the stage, sprawling before the bier of the phoenix.

* * *

Ruiz had time enough to see shock and outrage begin to form on the thin aristocratic face of the senior conjuror. Then the catchbubble formed around the stage, and the stun field struck. The conjurors dropped as if poleaxed, and even Ruiz, despite his conditioning, felt as if unseen hands were stuffing thick cotton into his ears, as if his skin no longer was connected to him, as if his eyes were full of opaque jelly. He lay motionless for what seemed years. Then he stirred, trying to locate his extremities, trying to decide which way was up. After a time, he sat successfully, shoving one of the unconscious conjurors off his legs.

Ruiz moved in a fugue. Had more of his personality remained operative he might have been cursing his stupidity and inattention. As it was, the only strong current in Ruiz’s mind was the emotion with which he’d viewed the conclusion of the phoenix play, a deep melancholy regret, centered on the ravaged body of the phoenix. As his vision cleared marginally, all he could see was her still form.

The light in the transport bubble was pervasive, a hard violet-tinged radiation that allowed nothing to remain hidden. Ruiz found his staff, got unsteadily to his feet, staggering and almost tripping over the body of the mage. Trailing his staff from one hand, he approached the bier where the phoenix lay. His head was filled with a sourceless buzzing, his bones shook in the grip of the slaver’s unshielded drives; thought was impossible. He stood looking down at the phoenix. By no stretch of the imagination could she be considered beautiful now. The blossoms had wilted and fallen over her like coarse yellowing snow, and the vines themselves were already far gone into decay.