Halla spoke from the doorway: “They are alive.”
“I’m glad. How do you feel about it?”
“Glad. You should sleep.”
She didn’t sound glad to me. Maybe when Halla was glad, she looked the same as bored, or worried, or constipated. “I’ll go to sleep if you sing to me,” I said.
“That is foolish.” Halla sighed. “I am sorry we abandoned you. It puzzles me.”
“Don’t kick yourself in the ass too hard. It was Harik. The grunting little weasel made you decide to leave.”
Halla’s eyebrows flew up. “That makes more sense. I would not want it said that we left you to die. I think your death might make me sad.”
I guffawed. “Hell, that may be the closest you’ve come in years to saying you could tolerate me! I’d have been happy if you promised me that when I died you wouldn’t let your dogs eat my corpse.”
“I do not have dogs.” She left the room before I could say anything else.
“Pil, I’m off to see Harik. Do you want to come?”
She slapped my good shoulder. “No, I’ll wait here until you get back. I want to laugh at whatever bad deals you made.”
I lifted myself and called for Harik, who answered without delay. All of my pains slipped away from by body.
“What do you want, Murderer? I have little patience for frivolities today. That is a warning.”
I imagined drawing my sword, and the Gods’ Realm at dawn appeared. The field of pale-blue flowers seemed to slope away forever. A scent drifted up from them on a puff of breeze, and it smelled like Bett’s newly washed hair.
I smiled at Harik, who stood at the bottom of the gazebo regarding me with a blank face. “I won’t drag this out then, Mighty Harik. Memweck touched me three times before I killed the flaming hell out of him, and the wounds won’t heal. I’m here to explore how we may deal with that problem, since I know that not a single problem exists that Your Magnificence can’t solve.”
Harik pointed at me. “Murderer, I advised you in the most vigorous terms to leave Memweck alone. Well, you have slain him. Oh, joyous day for you! Now you must embrace the repercussions of your act. Survive them if you can.”
I had expected Harik to bargain tough and act like a puffed-up, snotty blowhard, but I hadn’t expected a dull refusal. “Harik, I continue to slaughter people by the wagon load on your behalf, and I intend to keep doing that for a good long while. But I fear I won’t kill nearly so many if I’m working with one leg and one arm. Or if this numbness makes my heart explode.”
“That’s a sterling bit of logic, Murderer. You have persuaded me. I shall relieve you of one malady.”
Harak hurled me down like a plummeting anvil. When I arrived, I thrashed on the bed but didn’t fall off. Then my body refused to breathe. I gagged while spears of pain flew from my crushed shoulder down my arm and my back. Harik, that wriggling, rank, craven blemish on all that is pure and joyous had chosen to heal my numbness.
I took some time to adjust to that enthralling development. Pil didn’t laugh at me out loud, but I could see in her eyes she thought I was an idiot for merrily trotting off to Harik and expecting him to be nice to me.
Before dawn, I told Pil, “Bring Whistler and Leddie. There’s no call for them to sit around and suffer.”
Whistler seemed stunned as well as physically thrashed. He sat silent while I healed him, and he walked out without speaking when I told him we were done.
When Leddie tramped into the room, she said, “Fix me, you fine man. Then I’ll be ready to kill anybody who farts loudly at me. Not that I will. But I could!” She held Memweck’s sword in her hand. It was a short, bronze, broad-bladed weapon, and she didn’t put it down during the whole time I helped her. I investigated the awful cuts on her face and chest, but they were as much a mystery as my leg.
I said, “Memweck really did give you that face, then?”
Leddie grinned. “He did, but he won’t do it again! Thank you, Bib. If I can grant you a favor sometime, just say it.”
Now that I had taken on the wounds from healing Leddie and Whistler, I tried to lay still. I dozed a bit through sunrise and on until midday. A big window filled most of one wall, and in daylight, I could see that the other walls had been painted the color of pomegranates.
I called on Gorlana, Fingit, Chira, and every other god I knew except Harik, Lutigan, and Krak. Harik had already denied me. I didn’t expect a cozy welcome from Lutigan since I had just killed his son. I didn’t call Krak because nobody called the Father of the Gods unless no other choice existed. Calling Krak for some persistent wounds was like trying to cook soup over a volcano.
Giving up on the gods at last, I asked Pil to fetch Halla for me. When she arrived, I said, “I suppose it’s time.”
“You should not wait,” Halla said with no emotion.
“All right. Will you do it?”
Halla was already unwrapping a cloth that held a nice selection of knives and a saw.
“You don’t have to be so goddamn eager!”
Halla smiled for an instant and then handed me a piece of leather.
I had spent most of my power fighting Memweck and healing us afterward. The wise course was to save what remained for any deadly situations. So Halla cut off my leg using plain, uncomplicated steel, severing it above the catastrophic break. I used a tithe of power to stop the bleeding, and Halla bandaged it with yellow silk.
Unhealed, the leg would have poisoned my blood and killed me within a couple of days. I could have used magic to pull out the poison, but it would need to be
