"What-why-how are you-"

"Are you all right? Did it hurt much?"

"No, but- What's she doing here?"

"She showed us the way. No, Tyr, he means Ischade, don't look so hurt-"

"We buried you, why didn't you-"

"I couldn't leave him. He's hurt. Look, there's an arrow through his-"

"You ass, you're deadf"

"... Leg-yes, I know! But he's-"

Stillness fell all around them. The black chariot stood hard by, and as the white-robed figure stepped down from it, Harran looked up. Most carefully he sank to one knee in the dirty street, laid down the limp, bloodied young man he was carrying, and kneeling, bowed himself slowly double. He was a priest, and a healer, and had worked in Death's shadow before: he knew her when he saw her.

Siveni looked at him, and at Mriga, and tossed her spear away. It lay scorching the dirt, afire as if it lay yet in the furnace where the thunderbolts were forged. Her robes shimmered gray, and the Queen's blinding white, in its light. Quickly, and none too gracefully-for she had had little practice at this sort of thing-she went down on her knees in front of the Queen of hell, and bowed her bright head right down to the dirt. Her helmet slipped off and rolled aside; she ignored it. "Madam, please," she said, in a muffled voice, "take me. Let them go."

"What?" Harran said, looking up from Tyr, who was washing his face again.

"Your goddesses have come to beg your life of me," said the Queen. "But you know the ancient price for letting a soul go back up that road once it's come down."

"No!" Harran said, shocked. And then, remembering to whom he spoke, "Please, no! I'm dead-but my town's not. It needs her. Mriga, talk her out of this!"

Mriga could only look at him, and not steadily: Her eyes were blurring. "She also has offered to pay the price," said the Queen. "They almost came to blows over it. They cannot choose. I offer you the choice."

Harran's jaw moved as his teeth ground. "No," he said at last. "I won't go-not at that price. Send them home. But-"

"We're not leaving without him," Mriga said.

Siveni looked up from the dirt, her eyes flashing "Certainly not."

The place was becoming brighter. Was it Siveni's spear, Mriga wondered, or something else? The buildings seemed almost as bright as if Sanctuary's usual greasy sunlight shone on them. All around, the dead were blinking and staring. "Let him at least go," Mriga said. "We'll both stay."

"Yes," Siveni said.

Death's Queen looked somberly from one of them to the other.

Tyr slipped away from Harran's side and up next to Siveni-then jumped up and put her delicate, dusty forefeet right on the white robes of the Queen. She looked up into her face with big brown eyes.

"I'll stay too," Tyr said.

Mriga and Siveni and Harran all started violently. Only Ischade looked away and hid a smile.

The Queen looked down at the dog with astonishment, and finally reached out to scratch her behind one ear. She looked over at Ischade. "This orgy of self sacrifice," she said, with the slightest, driest smile, "comes on behalf of Sanctuary?"

"More or less, madam," said Ischade, matching the smile. "I question whether it deserves it."

"It does not. But how rarely any of us get what we deserve. Which may be for the best." The Queen looked at her supplicants-one mortal and one goddess kneeling, one goddess standing, and (apparently) one more leaning against her and having the good place behind her ears scratched. "No wonder you two have been having such trouble achieving union. It's a trinity you're part of, and without your third there's never agreement on anything. But with him-"

"Them," Tyr said.

The Queen looked wry. "A four-person trinity?- Assuredly, I must get rid of all of you somehow," she said. "There would be no peace for any of us with all of you walking around here shining and tearing up the place. And arguing." In this warming, melting light, she seemed much less grave and awful than she had. Mriga even thought that her eyes crinkled in amusement; but in the growing radiance, and the way it reflected dazzling from her veil, it was becoming hard to tell. "But the law is still the law. The price must be paid-"

There was a long pause.

"We could split it four ways," Harran said.

Siveni looked at him in shock, then smiled. "Why, you're my priest indeed. Each of us could spend a quarter of our time here," she said to the Queen. "We could take it in turns-"

The Queen was silent a while. "I believe I could defend that arrangement to my husband," she said at last. "But your priest is dead, goddesses. He has no body to go back to, any more than that poor child-"

"He's not a child really," Harran said, "he's about seventeen, and I keep trying to tell you all, he's not dead."

"Why ..." The Queen looked closely at the young man's soul-body in the growing light. "Indeed he's not," she said. "This soul is shattered."

Mriga stood there in shock, thinking of the young body underneath Harran's, stiff and still-but, she now remembered with amazement, not cold. "He was struck down in the attack that killed you, Harran," Ischade said, "but though his body survived the blow, apparently his mind didn't. It happens sometimes-a soul is too fragile to withstand the idea of its own demise and disintegrates. Leaving the body still breathing, but empty-"

"The arrow missed the main artery," Harran said. "The wound'll hurt, but it'll heal-"

"Go then," said the Queen, fondling Tyr's ears and smiling slightly at her. "Enough has happened for one day. Go, before my husband comes back and finds you here and starts an argument." There were nervous looks all around at this prospect. "But perhaps one of you would stay for now?" And the Queen looked down at Tyr.

Tyr slipped down, ran to Harran, collected a hug from him and slurped his face then bounced over to the iron chariot, jumped into it, and sat there grinning, with her tongue hanging out, waiting to be taken for a ride.

"I can manage the actual transfer to the new body easily enough," Ischade said, leading Mriga, Siveni, and the still slightly bewildered Harran away. "But you will all of you owe me large favors...."

"Well repay them twice over,'' Siveni said, sounding somewhat grim. It was apparent she didn't like the idea of owing anybody anything.

Harran was looking from one of them to the other. "You came to hell after me?"

Mriga looked with quiet joy at her lord and love as Ischade led them all back toward the upper world. "They don't call it that here," she said. She was beginning to understand why.

Behind them, Tyr had her ride-the first of many-and was off about her own business when Death came home from work. The Queen of hell rose up to greet him as always, went stately to the great doors, cool and grave and shining. There her husband dropped the bare bones that were his old joke with her, leaned the blade that is also an oar up against the dark doorsill, and went to her, laughing and shedding this one of his many forms. There was none to see the dark glory that hell's Queen took in her arms, or the way her gravity dropped away in the presence of that shadowy beauty which men dare not imagine; the way her light kindled at his touch, like day in night's embrace. They laughed together, madly delighted as first-time lovers, as they always had been; as they always would be.

"Dear heart," said the Queen of hell, "a dog followed me home. Can I keep it?"

"This isn't quite how I pictured hell," Harran was saying dubiously.

"Nor I," said Ischade, sounding almost cheerful as she led them on through the under-Downwind. Indeed the place looked very little like hell just now. Downwind or not, this place was looking remarkably good: the buildings less rotten, the shanties sounder, the people all around them shadowy still, but strong and fair and looking surprised at that. The sky had begun to blaze silver, and Siveni's robes and Mriga's own were back to normal. Mriga looked at Siveni and saw that even her 'smelly goatskin' looked fearsome and deadly-beautiful rather than ragged. Ischade's dark beauty burned more perilously than ever. And were her robes not quite as dark as they had been? And Harran ...