Managing death

'Because it does. It makes sense, there's that whole exchange of energy thing. If we're going to take something out of our universe and put it into another, of course it'll hurt.'

Suzanne looks at me, and laughs. 'Physics has nothing to do with what we are about, Steven.' Suzanne shakes her head. 'No. The pain is an additive, something the Orcus constructed through ceremony and hard work, and then entered into the process. Pomping used to be pleasurable, addictive.'

'That would have been dangerous.'

'You have no idea. Before there were thirteen, pomping was a nightmare. One you perhaps know too well.'

My ears prick up at that. Nightmares. She sees it and smiles.

'Yes, we all have them. You've heard of the Hungry Death?'

'Just a few stories, stuff Dad would tell me when I was a kid.' But the way Dad had told them, I'd never taken them seriously.

'They're just stories now, but there was a time when they weren't.' Her voice slows and grows sonorous and rhythmical. 'Long ago, before you and me. Before the world is the shape it is now, or shape it was before, there was only one Death. And it was called the Hungry Death because it was always hungry.' She crouches down and trails a finger in the dust of the Deepest Dark. Following her is a dusty wake, now thirteen trails, which then rise and race around her fingers. They coalesce into a form – vaguely human, vaguely Stirrer. She seems to shake her head at the whimsy of it, flicks her hand and the Hungry Death is just falling dust again, but it's broken a little of her rhythm, for a moment she is just the cynical RM again. 'If only it was that easy to dismiss. That painting of Mr D's, the lurid one by the peasant.'

'"The Triumph of Death"?'

'That's the one. Picture that. You got it?' I nod my head. 'Now imagine that painting, but there is only Death. And it is everywhere. The Hungry Death was a walking, shifting apocalypse. Random and violent in a… I suppose… more focussed way than our world actually is, and I would suggest that you'd agree that ours is a pretty random and violent one.'

'What happened to the Hungry Death?'

'You know. Close your eyes, and you know.' I do nothing of the sort, just stare at her. She blinks.

'I don't blame you,' Suzanne says. 'When I tell you there were thirteen warriors who went to battle with it, do you start to get the idea?'

I stare at her, dumbfounded.

She sighs. 'OK. Thirteen warriors. They fought the Hungry Death, and what a battle it was, fire and brimstone, storm and earthquake. All of that, real "Book of Revelations" stuff. They fought it. And they defeated it. Six times. And each time it came back. They cut it into pieces. And it came back. They ground its marrow to dust and it came back. They even ground its marrow to dust and turned it into some sort of paste, and yet it did no good.

'Finally a seventh, desperate battle. And this time, the earth a wasteland about them, the world a wound and the dying everywhere, they had begun to question why they had even tried fighting it in the first place. They held that Hungry Death down and this time they devoured it. Thirteen warriors, and each of them absorbed one-thirteenth of the Hungry Death's essence. And it has stayed that way through time.

'You see, it was never truly vanquished. Death cannot be. The Hungry Death lives on in each of the Orcus. It is our power, and the thing which each of us fear. That is what you dream about, Steven. Death untrammelled, blood and knives and the scythe. We all dream these dreams. It is why we don't need to sleep – its power sustains us – and why we don't want to.'

I blink. 'So I somehow ingested a thirteenth of the Hungry Death?'

'Absorbed is perhaps the better term. The Negotiation, why do you think it is so brutal? To become an RM you must appease the Hungry Death, blood must flow, and it is the only way to draw it out of a previous RM. And once it's within you… Surely you have felt it there? Not just in the dreams. Don't you sometimes feel its delight in death and destruction? It's the Hungry Death that makes it easier for you to deal with the things that you must see and do. And through you, it makes it easier on your Pomps.'

'So what's the All-Death? It spoke to me, and not just in a dream.'

'It's an aspect of the Hungry Death, too. We use it, of course, to generate the schedule, because it exists outside of time. Through it we know who is to die and when. It knows so much, and bereft of the Hungry Death, it is relatively benign.'

'It didn't feel benign when it grabbed me.'

'I said relatively. It remains a part of the Hungry Death.'

'So what was it, this thing in me before it became the Hungry Death?'

'Something like the Stirrer god, perhaps. We don't know. This all happened a very long time ago. Generations before even the oldest RM, before even the invention of writing.'

'And all it wants is death?'

'Yes, but not in the way that the Stirrers do. Which makes me believe it really isn't like them. You must be able to feel it, the pure joy it takes in death. Stirrers wish an end to life, this needs life to sustain it. I know you feel it.'

Yes, I do. Why wasn't I told about this earlier? Mr D with his all-in-good-time. My dreams have been such a horrible space, not least because of the pleasure I find in them.

'To think of such a cruel thing in here,' I tap my chest.

Suzanne pulls my hand away. 'You mustn't think that. It isn't cruel, merely inventive. Couple that with a clever and cruel creature like Homo sapiens and you have all sorts of madness, all sorts of ways of killing.' Suzanne's eyes gleam. 'It is better that it exists inside us, spread across the world, and that it is only fed every few generations in a Schism and a Negotiation. Think of the ruthlessness that we forestall with our existence. Our world, our myriad of societies, exist merely because we have given people time. We have given them the space to live longer, to develop culture and technology. Death remains, as does genocide and madness, but it is not all encompassing.'

I remember my Negotiation. The Orcus gathered around Morrigan and me in a circle, the hunger in their eyes. I now know where most of that came from. Come the next Negotiation will I look that way, too?

'So I rule the land and the sea around Australia as Death, because once there were warriors and they killed Death itself.'

'No, you cannot kill Death, only shape its form. And no, you do not rule the sea.'

'Why hasn't Mr D explained this? Gaps, gaps! I've got so many bloody gaps in my knowledge. What does, then?'

'Water, and the force within it. We've made our agreements with that force to cross the seas. But we have no power there. It does with those souls who die within its substance what it will. I hope that you'll never have to deal with it. Water is a cruel negotiator.' Suzanne shivers. 'And that is your lesson for today. The Stirrer god is powerful. But there is a power within us, too. The secret is to use that power without destroying everything those first warriors fought for.'

'And how do we do that?'

'I have a plan.' Suzanne puts a finger against my lips. 'But that is for another time.' I'm still thinking about plans, and Deaths of the sea, when I shift back to my office. Right on target. Tim obviously senses my return because he gives a ragged cheer from his office.

There's a message on my phone. Lissa.

'Call me, babe, when you get the chance.'

I dial her number. She answers before the first ring.

'That was quick,' I say.

'I was just about to call you again. Where have you been?'

I mumble something about Death Moot prep, feel a pang of guilt. If only she knew. Maybe I should just tell her about the deal with Suzanne now.