The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

“I ASK FOR THE JUDGMENT OF ISTHIL.”

At that a beam of light so bright and terrible that it seemed to shine through each of us, so bright it might have been the eye of a nuclear explosion, shone from above, directed at one of the seven thrones.

When the light faded just enough that I could reopen my eyes, there sat upon that throne what looked superficially like a woman, but a woman who must have stood fifty feet tall. Yet how can a measurement we use to determine such mundane things as size and distance possibly describe this creature?

I can say only this: that I fell to my knees.

I am not a very religious person, and I don’t think of myself as someone easily cowed or easily awed. But in Isthil’s presence it was as if no other stance was possible. I fell to my knees not in fear, but because no human being could do otherwise. My insides shook. My hands and legs trembled. I felt bathed in electricity, in an energy so powerful, so incomprehensibly great, that no one, not the greatest men and women in the world, not the greatest men and women in all of human history could have done anything but kneel and be utterly transfixed.

“Isthil!” The word came from my mouth with a voice that was mine, yes, but transformed into a sound I did not know I possessed.

I was not alone in crying her name in a sort of ecstasy. The name Isthil came from every mouth, and I saw Messenger on his knees, no longer even aware that I was present, bathed in that light, absorbing that light as if he was a starving man being offered a banquet.

“Isthil!” we cried in ragged voices.

“Isthil!”

Isthil stood before her throne. In her hand was a sword that might have felled skyscrapers or cleaved giant aircraft carriers with a single blow.

Then Isthil shrank, reducing her intimidating size to that of an ordinary woman, though no one not deaf, dumb, blind, and senseless could ever have mistaken her for anything but a goddess. It was in this reduced but still awe-inspiring form that she spoke.

“I come among you to judge a servant who has erred,” Isthil said. “The penalties are these: a doubling of time owed as my messenger, isolation, or obliteration.”

“Obliteration. Does she mean death?” I asked.

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; Messenger did not answer, but I earned a sharp, worried look from the accused woman’s apprentice. He had edged closer, as though he perhaps sensed my sympathy for his master’s plight.

“I will not impose obliteration,” Isthil said. “There was no evil intent in this messenger’s heart. Thus I choose as an act of my will to withdraw the shadow of death. But my will alone may not decide all things. Chance must have its say.”

I nodded, understanding at least some of this from what Messenger had taught me as well as from my brief reading in the book of Isthil. The Heptarchy was charged with keeping balance in all things, but in all things chance—luck—must have a part. This is why we summon the Master of the Game to offer a sinner an opportunity to win and thus escape. Chance plays a role in all such contests, as it does in all our lives.

But of course Isthil had her own ways of submitting to chance. “I call upon my brother, Ash, god of peace and war.”

A definite murmur swept through the taciturn messengers. My Messenger’s eyes went wide. He had told me that Ash had turned against mankind, that he was an enemy to humanity, allied with Malech, the god of pleasure and denial, whose servants included Oriax.

Ash did not appear in a burst of nuclear light as Isthil had done. We all strained to see him arrive on his throne, but instead we felt rather than saw a presence behind us, and turning, I saw him.

If he was related in any way to the magisterial figure of light and stern beauty that was Isthil, that relation was very, very attenuated. Ash, god of peace and war, was large but not superhumanly so. Rather he looked quite ordinary. He was dressed like a man who might be headed out to play a round of golf or perhaps take the boat out on the lake.

Except for his face.

His face had something canine about it, a subtle pushing forward of the nose and jaw so that they evoked a muzzle. His teeth were prominent, bared in a mouth that drew back in an expression that reminded me strongly of a stray dog I’d tried to adopt once. The dog had to go, sadly, because his earlier experiences in life had left him with what animal behaviorists call “fear aggression.” The dog—and this god—were hyperalert, nervous, twitchy, afraid, and covering that fear with an expression of belligerence.

The dog’s belligerence had expressed itself with angry yips, snapping of teeth, and a low growl. I heard something very like that low growl coming from Ash. It was like a low note played on a stand-up bass, with the bow drawn slowly over tight strings.

His eyes were wild, darting here and there, seeking avidly for threat in each face he saw. His bare arms were strong and muscular, his movements quick. My father used to talk about fellow soldiers he’d known who walked around with a “chip on their shoulder,” actively seeking trouble.

The blond apprentice must have made a face or a move that caught Ash’s attention because in a blur of Flash-like speed, Ash had him on the ground with a glittering bayonet in his hand, the tip pressed against the apprentice’s throat.

“Did you have something to say?” Ash demanded in a feral snarl.

“No. No, sir.”

“Another pound of pressure and the tip of my blade punctures your carotid artery. There will follow a spurt of blood, a pulsing geyser of it that will weaken quickly as your blood pressure drops.” Ash leaned down close and now his face was very definitely, unquestionably, a canine muzzle, teeth bared. “Do you worship me?”

“If you want me to,” the apprentice managed to say between chattering teeth.