Frauds and fools, every one – and the good ones more than the bad. Like quicksilver, pain slips from the hand that would grasp it and divides before the blow that would cleave it. Without the Pains, the multiverse can endure no more than wind can blow without the air. Suffering breeds strength from weakness, it heralds new births, it guides all beings through life. The dead soar to oblivion on black wings of anguish, and even pleasure springs from the same well as agony. To shun pain is to lie stillborn forever.
(A child, wishing he could swim once more in brown waters, lies slick with sweat and speckled in pink, his stiff legs withering to useless sticks. I have hugged him to my breast; the Pains have rooted and sprouted unseen and unfelt, and now they have burst It is not right, and it is not wrong; it is life.)
At a crossroads, the Hunter stops and turns his head right, then left. He is looking through walls with those ebony eyes, searching for what has already found him. I take him in my arms and press myself close. A hundred blisters sprout beneath his armor, and still I hold the Thrasson tight as a lover; I hold him tight so the pods will root deep, deep down in his soul and not rub off.
His body tenses.
That huge amphora slips through his arms and nearly crashes to the street. He cries out and drops to his heels. He catches it, and gives out a long breathy sigh, as though smashing that jar would be worse than dying.
Perhaps it would. There is a golden net inside, god-enchanted just to catch me.
The Thrasson balances the amphora on the street and slowly turns, his free hand on his sword and his eyes narrowed. It may be that he felt a chill beneath his armor, as though a ghost had embraced him, but he cannot be certain. So sudden and fleeting was the touch that even now he wonders if he imagined it The crowd swirls past, cursing him for a fool or a madman and keeping a watchful eye on his weapon hand. Though I stand less than a pace away, of course he cannot see me. Soon enough, he decides it was nothing more than a sudden case of armor itch. He takes up the amphora again and bulls his way back into the crowd. Already, I see a thousand hooked spines stabbing through his backplate.
Do not call it revenge-never revenge. Even the gods deserve their pain, and the Thrasson shall bear it to them. Hall Of Marble
After so many hours harrowing Sigil's teeming lanes, what does the Thrasson think when at last he plows through the crowd and sees the Blue Hall looming ahead? I know. The Lady of Pain always knows, and she will tell you:
The Hall of Information looked exactly as twenty or more peevish direction-givers had said it would: an imposing monolith of pale blue marble, with a roof of black slate and three massive columns straddling a pair of gray entrance ramps. Inscribed on the capitals of the three pillars were the words 'Cooperation,' 'Compliance,' and 'Control,' an oddly ominous motto for what was purported to be a service bureau. A web of fracture lines laced the 'Cooperation' post, which, despite a supporting cage of steel braces, appeared on the verge of collapse.
Clutching his amphora in both arms and pushing through a torrent of drab-cloaked beings-human and otherwise – the Thrasson angled across Crystal Dew Avenue toward the ramp between 'Compliance' and ''Control.' The nearer he approached the hall, the less he agreed with the churls who had called it 'an edifice of stately grandeur.' Even a simple man of action could see that the building suffered from a clumsy attempt to substitute opulence for taste. The stark bands of the onyx corner boards made a mockery of the marble facade's soft swirls, while the turquoise window casings looked like the painted eyes of a common harlot. The door guards, with their crimson breastplates and rusty shoulder spikes, added just the splash of blood to make a vulgar mess of the whole thing.
Jewel of the Infinite Planes indeed! Sigil so far had been a bitter disappointment to the Thrasson. So thick was the ginger air that it dragged over his face like cobwebs; just breathing the awful stuff filled his throat with a burning, acrid grit. In some wards, the avenues ran ankle-deep with swill, and in others, a man could hardly shove his way through the throngs that packed the streets. Everywhere, the constant drizzle stained the dreary building facades with runnels of yellow sulfur. Upon each sweltering breeze came a stench more rancid than the last, and nowhere did the clamor ebb for even a moment.
The Thrasson had heard that Sigil was shaped like the inside of a floating wheel, and that if he looked straight up, he would see the roofs of distant buildings instead of sky. So far, he had seen nothing but a sick, brown haze. It was said that the city was the hub of the multiverse, that somewhere in its bounds lay a portal to each world in the infinite planes; to the Thrasson, it seemed that every one of those portals was the wrong end of a garbage chute. He wanted nothing more than to complete his task and be gone from the place.
The Thrasson climbed the ramp and crossed the portico, unabashedly returning the stern glower of the guards. He would have welcomed a challenge, so anxious was he to vent his frustration. In addition to the difficulties of delivering the amphora, no one in the city seemed to know of him. He did not expect them to recognize him by sight, or anything so foolish, but it did seem reasonable to assume that by now his deeds would have been sung in even the lowliest gutter house of Sigil. Yet, when he introduced himself, he still had to recount his entire list of feats – at least those he could remember – and even after he described the felling of the Acherian Giant, most people simply turned away in indifference. The only ones interested in him were the thieves eyeing his heavy purse and the guides who, hearing the name of the one he wished to find, scurried away without naming a price.
As the Thrasson neared the entrance, the sentries reached over and pushed open the doors. They gave no salutation or comment, and their faces betrayed no hint of either respect or disdain. They were simply holding the doors for a man burdened with a heavy amphora.
That anonymous courtesy made the Thrasson's belly bum with indignity. Still, as it was the burden of fame to suffer ignorance in good grace, he paused long enough to utter a few sentences of thanks.
'Bar that, pal,' answered the tallest guard, a square-chinned fellow with a two-day growth of beard on his cheeks. 'We'd do the same for any blood. Now get on with it.' He jerked his head toward the entrance. 'Madame Mok don't like us letting in drafts.'
The Thrasson stepped into a murky foyer of blue marble, where he found himself standing at the end of a serpentine visitors' queue. The line switched back and forth a dozen times until it finally stopped before a high, looming counter of black marble. The massive desk stood directly beneath a glowing chandelier of blue-green beryl crystals. It was flanked by a pair of silver, hand-shaped braziers, from which rose two plumes of pink, apple-sweet incense smoke.
Behind the lofty counter sat a single bespectacled clerk, hunched over the bench and using quill and ink to scratch notes into a parchment ledger. From the wooly nap atop his head rose the double-curled horns of a bariaur, a sort of goatlike centaur that roamed many of the multiverse's planes. The Thrasson had already been surprised by the hundreds of bariaur pushing through Sign's packed streets; in his own plane, Arborea, the bariaur were an unsettled, carefree race who would sooner leap into a cesspool than enter a city. He found it difficult to believe that any of them actually abided in Sigil, much less worked inside a gloomy building like the Hall of Information.
The Thrasson considered the line only a moment before deciding it was beneath him to wait. Scattered among the humans were frog-faced slaadi, dwarves both bearded and bald, a svelte trio of elves, even a lizardlike khaasta
