As for the goddess Hashupit, she sat at the far end of her father’s feasting table and watched, thinking of her mating ceremony on the morrow. She had no faith that she would survive long after that, after Bhas had secured his triumph, and in any ease, Pharaoh would be dust, utterly and forever.
Ruiz stood at the apron of the stage, waiting. His staff trembled in his hand. But he was so transfixed by the play that the staff had to increase its signal to a painful tingle before he responded and dropped his eyes to the indicator. Metal was moving nearby, a mass suggestive of the craft that Ruiz watched for. He looked back over his shoulder, striving to pierce the gloom beyond the cressets, though he knew that such a craft would have excellent visual shielding. He felt a familiar tightening between the shoulder blades, and he should have taken steps to purge the spell of the play from his mind. The indicators zeroed again, and he relaxed minimally. The poachers were evidently willing to wait for the end of the play.
For the last time, Hashupit stood at the south edge of the world, looking down into Hell, her silk slippers touching the crumbling verge, where a heavy man would not dare stand. A hot wind lifted her cloud of fine hair and brought the scent of her body to her. She wore her favorite gown, so fine and sheer that her elegant flesh showed clearly beneath. Her ruined hand was wrapped in satin ribbon, cinched by strings of black sandpearls. She was, again, a magnificent sight, a believable goddess.
From the north came Bhas, to perform the ceremony of joining, the final cementing of his power. From the east staggered Thethri, bridegroom, holding his bloated belly as if it might fall off. From the west came Menk, a jealous witness to the ceremony. They slowly converged on the goddess, who shifted just a bit closer to the edge.
Bhas cried out in alarm, “Take care, beautiful Hashupit; the drop is far. You would not care for the steams of Hell, nor would I care to descend after you.”
Thethri made a faint gurgling sound and extended his skeletal arms toward her.
“You see,” Bhas said, “your husband-to-be is concerned. Please, come away from the edge.”
She held up her hand, the one wrapped in ribbon. “I’m no longer so beautiful, am I?”
“No matter,” Bhas said, edging closer by imperceptible stages. “Thethri is not particular.”
“So I guessed.”
Bhas stopped, just out of reach of Hashupit’s arms. He eyed Hell’s void uneasily, then stepped back a bit. “Menk,” he ordered, “bring her away from the edge.”
Menk folded his massive arms. “No, Father; I have no stomach to begin another million-year climb. You must fetch her yourself, or perhaps Thethri will do it.” Menk laughed, a soft throaty snigger.
The end came swiftly.
Thethri tottered forward with a strangled cry of desire, and the goddess welcomed him with open arms. Bhas darted forward, too late, as the two toppled off the edge of the world, Thethri shrieking fear, Hashupit smiling like a bride, clinging tightly.
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.