Free The Incompleat Nifft by Michael Shea Page A

one hard condition. The Master's lieutenants dwell everywhere. To pass those places where they have the Right of Toll, you must pay them a morsel of your flesh."
    I asked him, "Does the Master have . . . many Lieutenants?"
    "As many," he said, "as there are ways to enter this world. But no man must pay toll more than once. Nor may the toll be lethal in its nature."
    Having come through what we had, we couldn't let this ghoulish necessity be an obstacle. We nodded—Defalk said nothing, knowing that consent was not required of him. There was a banging from behind the shacks, and a noise of wheels and harness. The Taker reappeared, leading a pair of shrouded beasts hitched to a giant black chariot.
    The wheels were high as a man, the body like the prow of a fighting sloop, black as obsidian but ribbed inside with ivory. Of the team we could see two hairy tails and eight massive paws with nails as long as my fingers. The beasts' heavy shrouds of black canvas were bound snug with leather straps.
    The Guide mounted the car, took up the reins and drew them tight.
    "Mount," be said, "and grip the rail. You must hold fast before we loose the team."
    We got up into the chariot—but Defalk stayed on the ground. "It is unfair!" he shouted. "How many oaths are made and broken by how many thousands of young lovers?!" None of us answered, only waited, for we all knew he had to come—he too knew it. We couldn't grudge him the thin comfort of making his moan before descending to his fate. "I loved her well—I loved her greatly—none of your sneering can alter that. But love is life, not swords in the heart! How could I know she would do what she swore?"
    "Oh yes," Haldar said, "I'm sure you thought her as trifling as yourself, you had to to save your pride. So you missed your sworn hour. What about after, when you knew what she had done? You had seven years to make it good."
    "Kill myself! Cleave my bowels with a dirk! Oh yes, thief—what easier done? She was dead. Her pain was past. With or without me she faced her mother's hate and imprisonment. She'd have loved any man she had the chance to, just to spite her mother, and she'd have died for the same spite whoever had been her man."
    "Climb aboard, courtier," said the Guide. "Our way is hard, and we must start."
    Defalk let his shoulders hang, and looked at the ground. Then he got aboard. The Guide tightened the reins and grasped his staff near the butt, stretching it out over the shrouded pair. The serpent coiled restlessly, and its tongue flickered. The Taker of Souls unbelted the shrouds, and leapt away as he pulled them off.
    Two immense black hounds sprang up against the light, and howled. Then they fell on each other like famished sharks. Their knotted, lean-strung bodies were not of living flesh, but something more like clay, for their red jaws tore great clots of it from one another, and there was no blood. Only a giant's strength could have held them within the traces. The chariot rocked and swayed. The serpent began to strike down upon the beasts.
    With a hammer's power and a whip's speed it sank its fangs into their heads and shoulders. The hounds wailed with pain and raised their fangs against the snake's, always too slow. With flicks of his wrist, the Guide administered pain to the beasts, till their fighting ceased, and they cringed apart. Then he shook the reins, and the dogs bounded to his will. The Taker of Souls bowed his farewell to the Guide, but we did not see him rise from his salute, so swiftly were we whirled away.
    We thundered up the lakeside ridge, and poured across it. All hell spread out before us, far below. A score of rivers foamed down into those black badlands, which were all tunneled and canyoned and chasmed with the branching waters, till the terrain looked like the worm-gnawed wood you find on beaches. Then we were plunging down into it.
    Ye powers dark and light! What a ride, Barnar! There was no road—there needed none. Though we favored high