Siveni stared at the Hound. It looked at her out of hungry eyes, growled again, and licked its chops. Where its saliva dripped, the stone underfoot bubbled and smoked.

The answering growl startled Mriga as Tyr shouldered past her and Siveni. "Tyr !" she said, but Tyr, bristling, walked straight up to the Hound and snarled in its face.

The Hound reared up, its jaws wide....

"Tyr, no!" Siveni cried, and slipped forward, raising her spear. Too late: Tyr had already leapt. But the growling and snarling and roaring that began, the rolling around and scrabbling and biting, didn't have quite the sound any of them expected. And it all stopped quite suddenly to reveal the Hound on its back, its belly showing, its tail between its legs, and Tyr, flaming-eyed, holding it by the throat. It was as if a rabbit held a lion pinned, but the rabbit seemed unconcerned with such details. Tyr snarled again and somehow seized that throat, as wide and heavy as a treetrunk, in her teeth; lifted the Hound and shook it, snarling, as she would have shaken a rat; then flung the whole huge monster away. "Yi, yi, yi, yi, yi!" shrieked the chief of the Hounds of Hell, the Eater of the Sun, as it scrambled desperately to its feet, away from the little dark-furred dog, and ran for the walls. It went right into one, and through it, and was gone.

Tyr panted for a moment, then shook herself all over, sat down, and scratched.

Mriga and Siveni stared at each other, then at Ischade. "I don't understand it," Mriga said to her. "Perhaps you do."

Ischade smiled and held her peace. "Well," Siveni said, "she is a bitch ..."

Tyr swung her head around-she was washing, with one leg up-and favored Siveni with a reproachful look.

"An extraordinary one," Ischade said, "but still a bitch; and as such no male dog, even a supernatural one, would fight with her under any circumstances. I suppose that even here, dogs will be dogs ... Canny of you to bring her. Shall we go on?" And she swept on into the darkness that the Hound had blocked. Mriga followed, thoughtful.

On down they went, the light of Siveni's spear burning bluer and brighter. The sound of moaning and screaming grew less distant. Goddess or not, Mriga shook. The voices were lifted less in rage or anguish than in a horrible dull desperation. They sounded like beasts in a trap, destined to the knife, but not for ages yet-and knowing it. A horrible place to spend eternity, Mriga thought. For a moment she was filled with longing for her comfortable, dirty hut in heaven, or even for the real thing of which it was the image-the rough hut in the Stepsons' barracks, and her own old hearth, and Harran busy on the other side of it. At least one of us will get out of here, Mriga thought. The sunlight for him, if for no one else.... ,

Siveni glanced over at Mriga with a curious look and opened her mouth, just as Ischade glanced lazily over her shoulder at them. "We're close to the ferry," she said. "I trust you brought the fare?"

Mriga shook her head, shocked. Her omniscience hadn't warned her of this. But Siveni's mouth quirked. She went rummaging about in her great oversized tunic and came out with a handful of money: not modern coin, but the old Ilsigi golden quarter-talent pieces. One she handed to Ischade with exaggerated courtesy, and one to Tyr, who took it carefully in her teeth; another went to Mriga. Mriga turned the quarter over, looked at it, and shot her sister an amused look. The coin had Siveni's head on it.

Ischade took the coin with a courteous nod, drew her cloak about her, and continued down the path. "They will be thick about here," she said as they descended, and the darkness opened out around them. "The unburied may not cross over."

"Neither would we, if we'd left all the preparations to you," Siveni said. "Trying to make things more 'interesting,' madam?"

"Mind the slope," Ischade said, stepping downward into the shadows and putting her hood up.

The ground was ditch-steep for a few steps, and they came down among shadows that moved, like the struggling scraps of darkness they had swallowed. These shadows, though, strode and slunk and walked aimlessly about, cursing, whining, weeping. Their voices were thin and faint, their gestures feeble, their faces all lost in the great darkness. Only here and there the blue-burning lightnings of Siveni's spear struck sparks from some hidden eye; and every eye turned away, as if ashamed of light, or ashamed to beg for it.

They made their way through the crowd, having to push sometimes. Tyr ranged ahead, her gold piece still in her mouth, snuffing the ground every now and then, peering into this face or that one. Following her, Mriga shuddered often at the dry-leaf brush of naked, unbodied souls against her immortal's skin. No wonder the gods hate thinking about death, she thought, as the ground leveled out. It's an ... undressing ... that somehow shouldn't happen. It embarrasses them. Embarrasses us....

"Careful," Ischade said. Mriga glanced down and saw that just a few steps would take her into black water. Where they stood, and other souls milled, the sour cold earth slanted down into a sort of muddy strand, good for a boat-landing. The water lapping it smoked with cold, where it hadn't rimed the bank with dirty ice. Tyr loped down along the riverbank, pursuing some interesting scent. Mriga looked out across the black river, and, through the curls of mist, saw the boat coming.

It was in sorry shape. It rode low, as if it were shipping a great deal of water-believable, since many of the clinker-boards along its sides were sprung. Steering it along with the oar that is also a blade, was the ferryman of whom so many songs circumspectly sing. He was old and gray and ragged, fierce-looking: too huge to be entirely human, and fanged as humans rarely are. He was managing the blade-oar one-handed. The other held a skeleton cuddled close, its dangling bones barely held together by old, dried strings of sinew and rags of ancient flesh. The ferryman sculled his craft to shore and ran it savagely aground. Ice cracked and clinker-rivets popped, and Mriga and Siveni and Ischade were pushed and crushed together by the press of souls that strained, crying out weakly, toward the boat.

"Get back, get back," the boatman said. He lisped and spat when he talked: understandable, considering the shape his teeth were in. "I've seen you lot before, and you none of you have the fare. And what's this? Na, na, mistress, get back with your pretty eyes. You're alive yet. You're not my type."

Ischade smiled, a look of acid-sweet irony that ran icewater in Mriga's bones. "It's mutual, I'm sure. But I have the fare." Ischade held up the gold quarter talent.

The ferryman took it and bit it. Mriga noticed with amusement that afterward, as he held it up to stare at it, the coin had been bit right through. "All right, in you get," he growled, and tossed the coin over his shoulder into the water. Where it fell ripples spread for a second, then were wiped out by a wild boiling and bubbling of the water. "Always hungry, those things," grumbled the ferryman, as Ischade brushed past him, holding her dark silks fastidiously high. "Get in, then. Mortals, why are they always in such a hurry? Coming in here, weighing down the boat, has enough problems just carrying ghosts. Nah, then! No gods! Orders from her. You all come shining in here, hurt everyone's eyes, tear up the place, go marching out again dragging dead people after you, no respect for authority, ghosts and dead bodies walking around all over the earth, shameful! Someone ought to do something ..."

Mriga and Siveni looked at each other. Siveni glanced longingly at her spear, then sighed. Standing in the bows of the boat, Ischade watched them, silent, her eyes glittering with merriment or malice.