and by the pale stars, I could see that I had come at last to the place where the Great River ended and truly began, a vast lake where the white-bodied, crocodile-headed ones paced back and forth, ankle-deep in thick grey mist, their long jaws bobbing up and down.
The evatim bore long hooks on poles, like boathooks, and as I watched one of them would occasionally pause, then reach down with his hook and draw up a human corpse, heave it onto his shoulder and depart, or just stand there, holding the dead in a lover’s embrace.
I realized to my horror that I was standing on a vast sea of corpses. I looked down and I could make them out dimly beneath the water’s surface, inches below my feet: faces, arms, bobbing chests and backs and buttocks jostling slowly in the black water like numberless fish in a net. I jumped back in revulsion, but there was nowhere to jump to.
I started to run again. Somehow, miraculously, the evatim seemed too busy with their tasks to notice me.
For the first time my footfalls made a sound, a heavy splashing and sucking, as if I were running through mud.
Truly this was the place I had read of in the Books of the Dead that Velachronos and I had copied, where the bodies and souls of the dead and the unborn are sorted out by the evatim, who are the thoughts and servants of the terrible god, and each person is judged, and carried to his rightful place, or cast out, or devoured.
I despaired then, for I knew that if Hamakina were here, I would surely never find her.
Yet I took the next step, and the next, and the next, slowing to a fast walk. If that is what it is to be brave, then I was. I continued. The mist swirled around my shins.
I seemed to be nearing the shallows. Reeds rose around me like bare iron rods. I passed one sunken funeral boat, then another, then a long stretch of boards and debris but no corpses or evatim.
A beach spread before me like a pale band on the horizon, like a white sunrise. The evatim struggled across it in an endless procession, dragging their burdens from the water.
I stood among the reeds and watched them for a time. Then I took a step forward, and cold water splashed around my knees. I gasped involuntarily at the sudden shock of no longer walking on the water, but in it. There was mud and sand beneath my feet.
I neared the beach, crouched down, trying to conceal myself among the last of the reeds. Gradually I could make out three huge doorways in the cliff-face beyond the end of the white sand. The crocodile-headed ones labored toward them, bearing their burdens through the doorways.
I didn’t doubt that each doorway led to a different place, and that here the final judgement of the god was made. Yes, I was on Surat-Kemad’s doorstep, in the anteroom of his great hall, forever beginning my quest.
But I didn’t know which of the three doors to go through. Surely my Father waited beyond…one of them.
I took the next step, and the next, freely mingling with the evatim, who took no notice of me. We crowded toward one of the doors. I was hemmed in by cold, hard bodies. I let the movement of the great mass of them determine my direction.
The empty face of an old woman bobbed in front of my face, her corpse slung over the shoulder of her bearer, her open mouth black, frozen as if perpetually about to shout or kiss or devour.
Once more the cliffs rose around me. Once more some of the evatim scrambled up the jagged stones, their glowing eyes seeming to rise into the sky like stars. Those who had climbed, I saw, set their burdens down on ledges and began to feast.
I turned away quickly and stared at the ground, and at the almost luminously pale feet and legs of the evatim.
The sides of the great doorway were carven smooth, its iron gates flung wide. The gates resembled, more than anything else, enormous, gaping jaws.
I tried to peer ahead again, but I could not see over the mass of the evatim. I jumped up. I turned and looked back, but only masses of crocodile-faces stared back at me, like a swirling shifting cloud filled with burning eyes.
“Stop! You are not of the brotherhood of the evatim!”
I whirled around again. A pallid, black-bearded face hovered before me, its red eyes unblinking. It rose on the body of a snake, only stiff as a tree trunk and covered with glistening silver scales the size of my outstretched hand. As I watched, another face rose from the ground on such a glittering stalk, and another, bursting out of the sand, out of the stone of the cliff face until a forest of them blocked my way. The evatim drew aside.
“You may not pass!” one of them said.
“Blasphemer, you may not enter our master’s domain.”
I got out my leather bag and struggled desperately with the drawstring, then poured the two grave coins into my hand.
“Wait,” I said. “Here. These are for you.”
The foremost of the man-headed serpent-things leaned forward and took the coins into its mouth. Its lips, like the Sybil’s, like my mother’s, were searingly cold.
But the coins burst into flame in the creature’s mouth and it spat them out at my feet.
“You are still alive!”
Then all of them shouted in unison, “This one is still alive!”
And the evatim came writhingthrough the scaled, shrieking forest, free of their burdens, on all fours now, their great jaws gaping. I drew my father’s sword and struck one of them, and another, and another, but one caught me on the right leg and yanked me to my knees. I slashed at the thing again and again. One of the glowing eyes burst, hissed, and went out.
Another reared up, closed its jaws on my back and chest, and pulled me over backwards. That was the end of the struggle. The great mass of them swarmed over me, while still the serpent-things shouted and screamed and babbled, and their voices were like thunder.
Teeth like knives raked me all over, tearing, and I still held the sword, but it seemed very far away and I couldn’t move it—
A crocodilian mouth closed over my head, over my shoulders and I called out, my voice muffled, shouting down the very throat of the monster, “Sybil! Come to me again—!”
I cannot say what actually happened after that. I saw her face again, glowing like a distant lantern in the darkness below me, but rising, racing upward, while the evatim tore at me and crushed me slowly in their jaws.
Then I distinctly felt myself splash into water, and the viscous blackness closed around me and the evatim were gone. I sank slowly in the cold and the dark, while the Sybil’s face floated before me and grew brighter until the darkness was dispelled and my eyes were dazzled.
“This time, you did well to call on me,” she said.
* * * *
I awoke on a bed. As soon as I realized that it was a bed, I lay still with my eyes closed, deliberately dismissing from my mind any thought that this was my familiar bed back home, that my adventures had been no more than a prolonged, horrible dream.
I knew it was not so, and my body knew it, from the many wounds where the evatim had held me. And I was nearly naked, my clothing in tatters.
But I still held my father’s sword. I moved my right arm stiffly, and scraped the blade along hard wood.
This bed was not my bed. It was made of rough boards and covered not with sheets but with sand.
I started to sit up, eyes still closed, and gentle hands took my by the bare shoulders. The hands were soft and warm.
I was dizzy then. The sword slipped from my grasp. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t focus. There was only a blur.
Warm water was being poured over my back. My wounds stung. I let out a cry and fell forward and found myself awkwardly embracing some unknown person, my chin on his shoulder.
I could see, then, that I was in a room stranger than any I had ever imagined, a place once richly furnished but now a wreck, turned