'He bears the mark of Health! Look at his hands!' A sob broke from him and he seemed to shrink about a foot. 'She knows,' he whispered. 'Dear gods, she knows, and she is angry with what we have done… with what I have done, and felt, and thought…'
He stared wildly around at the thieves, his face gleaming with the sweat of sheer terror. 'Don't you see? Health knows that we have blasphemed! She knows that Vengeance had nothing to do with this, nothing, and she has given this man the power to tame the evils we have loosed'
Without another word the Blesser rushed forward, his shaking fingers working to undo the knots that cut deeply into Deveren's wrists. 'Lady Health, forgive me, forgi-'
His eyes widened. Deveren stared back. Then the Blesser gasped, and a thin stream of crimson trickled from suddenly bloodless lips. He slumped forward on his own altar of darkness, and Deveren, shrinking backward, saw that a slim dagger protruded from his back. Deveren turned his shocked gaze upon Marrika, who only now was withdrawing her hand from the extended position of hurling the knife.
'It's a trick, isn't it, Fox,' she snarled. In some dim part of his mind, Deveren wondered how he could have thought her beautiful a few moments ago. 'You, you painted your hands with something, or you got someone to cast an illusion on you, didn't you? Well, it may have fooled Kannil, but it doesn't fool me!'
She sprang forward and wrenched the knife from the dead man's back. Her eyes flashed in the candlelight as she growled and moved toward Deveren.
He watched her, transfixed. Pain and grief and horror racked him, but not anger, not hate. He was incapable of those emotions tonight, as incapable of feeling them as he was of lifting his blessed hands to strike back. He could only stare, observing with an odd detachment the folds of her garb as they slipped back from the lifting arm, the slim strength of that arm, the grimace of mingled hatred and joy on the finely chiseled, tanned face…
A howl shattered the moment. It was not the cry of an angry dog, or the anguished wail of a person in pain. Those, Deveren had already heard tonight; heard, identified, and dismissed.
This sound shivered along the air, cutting it like a knife. It was long and keen and piercing, with something eerie behind it. It was the howl of a wolf-but what in the name of all the gods was a wolf doing here? The hairs along every inch of Deveren's body lifted in a primal response to the sound.
Marrika's blow froze as she, too, responded to the eerie noise. She whirled, angry at the interruption, but there was fear on her face now, too-fear that Deveren had never seen there before. The temperature of the room dropped like a stone.
Laughter, as eerie and unnatural as the wolf's howl, filled the room. Standing in the doorway, at least a dozen wolves at her feet, was the Blesser of Death who had so mysteriously come to Deveren on the night of his Grand Thefts. Her long white hair whipped wildly about her almost alabaster features, though there was no wind. She lifted her pale arms, one of which bore the jeweled rosewood staff, and cried, 'Taste you the kiss of Death!'
And then Deveren knew that it had not been merely the Blesser of Death who had save his life that night.
Many things happened at once.
The wolves began to shimmer. Their forms shifted, became translucent, reshaped. Abruptly, where the wolves had stood were the shapes of women; women who had no color to their faces or hair; women that one could see through if one tried. They were as different as any woman in shape and form, but they all had weapons of silver and steel that glinted in the flickering orange-yellow light, and that steel was echoed in their hard faces.
Thinking he must have gone mad, Deveren recognized among their number the slender form of Lorinda Vandaris-and the petite, but no less beautiful, image of his long-dead Kastara.
He cried out, an aching sound of mingled despair and hope, before the women descended on the terrified thieves. It was a pitiful battle. The ghosts of the dead could not be injured, but their shining blades could and did decimate their foes. Most of the thieves were too frightened to even fight back. The spectral blades wielded by Death's army left no wounds on the flesh, but those who felt the blows shuddered and died as if stricken by a mortal blow from a corporeal sword.
As they slew those they had come for, one by one, the women returned to their wolf shapes and crouched by the still-twitching bodies. Deveren watched, riveted, as something bright yellow separated itself from the dying men and women. The wolves yipped happily, their tails wagging, and leaped, open-mouthed, to devour the fleeing spirits.
They feed on souls, Deveren realized. Lady Death's spirit-wolves feed on human souls! He felt something cool and damp brush his hands, and whipped his head around. A huge lump rose in his throat. There was no fear, only joy.
'Kastara,' he managed.
The specter's incorporeal hands released the heavily knotted ropes from Deveren's hands. He stared up into the face of his beloved. The pert, pointed chin, the full lips, the look of love in the ghostly eyes. She was exactly as he remembered-no, not exactly. Her rounded belly was flat now, flat and taut as it was on their wedding night…
'You've come for me,' he whispered.
She shook her head, her transparent hair floating with the gesture. 'No, my love.' Her voice was soft, still Kastara's voice, but not human, not anymore. 'You can see me because of the gift Death's sister has given you. I have come to say farewell.'
She smiled at him, then began to drift away, her attention already returning to her duty-that of collecting souls for her mistress.
Deveren couldn't bear it. His hand, glowing with Health's own power, shot out to seize the ghost. He expected it to be a futile gesture, and assumed his hands would close on nothingness. Instead, to his shocked joy, he clasped a human wrist.
Kastara gasped and stared at him. Where his hand gripped her, the milky translucence had solidified. Her hand was completely human-and alive.
'No!' she cried, struggling.
Deveren stared at her hand. The human tint started to spread, tracing a languorous way up. Now Kastara's flesh was solid almost to her elbow. He realized dizzily what had happened. For all intents and purposes, he had the hands of Health tonight. And Health alone, of all the seven gods, had the power to bring back the dead.
Elation flooded him, and he grasped her other wrist. This, too, flushed a warm, living hue. 'Deveren, no, my love, you don't understand!' Kastara fought him like a wild thing. 'It was my time! Let me go, if you love me-let me go to the Light!'
She blurred in his sight, and for a horrible instant Deveren thought she was escaping him. Then he realized it was only his own tears that clouded his vision. She was mortal now almost to the shoulders.
'Love, love!' he cried brokenly. 'I am nothing without you! What is there, who is there left for me to love? Marrika took even our baby when she took you!'
Up to the chest now. Suddenly, Kastara ceased struggling. Comprehension and an aching compassion spread over her face. 'Beloved, there are many who yet need you here-who need the love that fills your heart, as I once did. And as for your child-you have found her already. Go and be with them, Deveren, while life is yet yours to enjoy, to drink of, to savor. But I am not of this world anymore; I cannot dwell here, mortal though you would have me be. Let me go, if ever you loved me. Let me continue my journey to the Light!'
Tears coursed down Deveren's face. Kastara was almost completely mortal now. If the transformation was allowed to continue, she would be alive, warm, in his arms, as she ought to have been.
But even as he clung desperately to this thought, he realized how selfish it was. The Blessers had been right after all. The ghost-wolves of Death were not evil, any more than their mistress was. They were not slaves; they served Death willingly, doing what must be done and earning their passage on to the Light.
He was past words; past the ability to let her know how he had loved her, how bleak life had been without her. Tears spilling down his ashen cheeks, Deveren in silence did the single most difficult thing he had ever done, would ever do, in his life.
He let her go.
At that moment, he felt a hand — a real, solid, human hand-clamp down on his shoulder and spin him around. He stared up into Marrika's face as she lifted her hand, clenched tight around the dagger, to complete
