Cwaino squinted at the wretched column. 'Bar that. If you wait, I wait-and I'm not staying down here a minute longer than I need to.'
The assertion seemed bold for a mere guard, but the Amnesian Hero would be glad to avoid paying more bribes. He was running low on gold, and he hated nothing more than relying on the good will of others for his wine.
As the Thrasson's procession approached the line of supplicants, the four Mercykillers moved forward to shove people out of the way. The petitioners grudgingly yielded to the rough treatment, pressing aside just far enough to let the sedan chair pass. Most were humans, but the Amnesian Hero also saw bariaur, elves, dwarves, ogres, khaasta, githzerai, and a few other races he had never before encountered – at least that he could recall. All had gaunt, haunted faces wearied by hunger and despair, and the soiled rags hanging from their bony shoulders hardly resembled the bejeweled foppery of most royal supplicants.
The Thrasson saw teary-eyed women supporting drooling elders whose glassy eyes were looking somewhere far beyond. He saw lonely naked orphans with swollen bellies and skin hanging loose on their crooked bones. He saw burly guards holding the leashes of wild-faced men with shackled hands, he saw coughing, quivering women trembling with age and flushed with fever, but nowhere did he see anyone arrayed in what Madame Mok called 'the proper style.' Aside from his own, there were no sedan chairs, no lantern boys or guards, not even a single figure dressed in a cloak decent enough to hang in a shepherd's hut.
Cwalno reached up to draw the chair curtain closed.
The Thrasson grabbed the cloth and held it open. 'What do you hope to hide, Cwalno? I've already seen that those poor wretches hardly look like royal supplicants.'
Cwalno appeared vaguely uncomfortable, but chuckled grimly. 'Who else would they be?' He shoved aside a babbling madman whose handler had dropped the leash. 'You can't think a sane man would – er, sony. That must be why Poseidon sent you.'
The Amnesian Hero locked gazes with the Mercykiller. 'I hope you are not trying to say that I am demented.'
Cwalno sneered, while at the same time hastening to shake his head as though he had been terribly misunderstood. 'A cutter like yourself? 'Course not!' There was a mocking tone to his voice. 'I'm only talking about your condition. Poseidon wouldn't send no blood with a memory to deliver his present. Any berk who can remember half what he's heard about the Lady of Pain would sooner jump into the Abyss than stand face-to-face with her.'
The Amnesian Hero sat back and nodded thoughtfully. Despite Cwalno's condescending manner, there was truth in what he said. The King of Seas was by nature a selfish god, hardly the type to restore a mortal's lost memories in return for a simple errand like delivering a gift. Since accepting the amphora, the Thrasson had been expecting to run into some such trouble. Now that he finally had some idea of its nature, he was almost relieved.
'If the Lady is so terrible to face, why are all these people waiting to see her?' As the Amnesian Hero studied the throng of dismal supplicants, it occurred to him they all had an abundance of one thing. 'Do the wretches not fear the Lady because of the gifts they bring her?'
Cwalno eyed the derelicts with a disdainful smirk. 'And what could the Lady want from these sods?'
'Their suffering, of course! That's why she is called the Lady of Pain, is it not?'
Cwalno, sneered, but was careful to neither nod his head nor shake it. 'You'll see soon enough, Thrasson.'
The Mercykiller pointed forward, where his three crowd-breaking companions had just pushed through into a large open square. A dozen men in cloaks of bright, spangled colors were cavorting in the space, leaping and tumbling and springing off their hands both forward and backward, all the while voicing a dismal, deep-throated dirge with no words the Amnesian Hero could identify.
On the far side of the square stood the yawning mouth of the Gatehouse's central tower. There were no guards in the area other than the strange acrobats, yet the crowd made no effort to creep forward. They seemed entirely resigned to their wait. From them, even the frantic energy of the tumblers drew no more than gray, disinterested stares.
The scene kindled a feeling of sad inevitability in the Amnesian Hero. The sensation had a vague familiarity that he sometimes experienced in moments of empathy, as though sensing the emotions of others could trigger the sentimental dregs of his own lost history. The Thrasson made no effort to call forth the memory which stirred the emotion; a thousand times he had tried to fish his past from such residues, and never did he draw up more than frustration and biting despair.
The Mercykillers led the procession straight across the square, marching through the acrobats' performance without a word of apology. The intrusion bothered no one, least of all the tumblers, who incorporated it into their act by doing handsprings between the armored guards and somersaults under the chair box. One exceptionally lithe performer leaped high over the forward bearers to come down, light as a feather, on the support shafts before the chair box. He squatted there like a frog with red mad eyes, glaring at the Thrasson and singing in a high, jittery voice:
'O tower not of ivory, but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable fire,
Our Lady of Pain!'
The Amnesian Hero leaned forward, carefully considering the words of the mad-eyed acrobat. In the Thrasson's experience, the accomplishment of any great feat required the solving of a riddle, and the fellow's strange words were nothing if not an enigma. He weighed each element of the song: a tower built by hands that stretched from the Lower Planes to the Upper, a magic rose growing in slime, a house of gain and unquenchable fire.
'Of course!' The Thrasson peered past the acrobat, noting the overall shape of the Gatehouse. The central tower was clearly a crowned head. The side wings could be taken for arms, while the comer towers bore a superficial resemblance to closed fists. 'The Gatehouse is the Lady of Pain!' The acrobat cackled and bobbed his head, singing:
