“A BARGAIN?” I said. There was no hiding the suspicion in my voice.

Dascolese nodded his head sagely. His jowls rippled. Fused into the stone as he was, the movement was entirely disconnected from the rest of his body. The fingers of his free hand opened and closed like a dying spider, but his other hand clutched that silver sphere. I glanced at it.

“Ah, you sense your reward! Do you know what that is?” I shook my head. “That is a silver tear. A memory, you might say, and here in these lightless vaults…they are dear indeed.”

“A memory?”

“Like an egg. Crack it, and drink the sweet nectar within, and some of what was stolen from you will return. Though, never as much as you want,” he said with regret. I didn’t care about that. I stared at the sphere hungrily. What could I recover of myself, were I to take it from him?

“What’s to stop me prying it from your hand, and leaving you here?”

Dasoclese laughed. “I welcome you to try. Cut my fingers off, even! Less of me to feel pain, I hope. But the sphere will not go with you, for it is not yours. No, it was given to me by Kulshetha the Fire-Spitter when he marched his army through here. Two tears he gave me, in exchange for a song.”

“A song?”

At this, Dasoclese’ face grew bitter and grim. “He bid me sing him a hymn! A song of the gods above!” Tears trickled down his puffy, baggy cheeks. “And they laughed. Their scorn mocked me, for even as I tried, the words would not come. Even my songs were gone.” The tunnel fell silent, and even the echoes of the vicar’s anguish were smothered by the blackness.

“What happened to the other silver tear?”

The vicar shook his head, appearing to summon his courage. “I took it. A passing soul like yourself helped me.”

“And what did you remember?”

Dasoclese looked at me with shining eyes. “My songs,” he said. “They are all I have to keep me company in this squalid place.”

I nodded, hearing him. Recognizing the truth of his words. “And this bargain?”

“I will give you my other silver tear—if given, it will become yours—in exchange for a service. A simple service.” I waited for him to finish. “Kill me.”

Perhaps he read the surprise on my face. He began to beg, to wheel, to offer that which I knew he did not have. I held up my hand, staying the noise, thinking in the silence. What would I choose to remember? A dangerous question. What memory, here in this depthless abyss, would be more useful than another?

“I will help you,” I said. The man’s blubbering stopped, and his heavy head hung in relief. A glistening rope of spittle ran from his thick lips. “But first, the tear.”

“We have a pact?” he said, raising his head. “Here, the only law is the pact. The accord. All else is wind.”

I nodded. “We have a pact. The silver tear for your life.”

“Pry my fingers open,” Dasoclese said. “I cannot move them, so long have I held the tear.” With revulsion, I realized he was right: the fingers that clasped the bauble were so dry and brittle they were nothing more than sticks.

I propped the torch against the wall—away from the vicar’s protruding leg—and gripped his dead fingers. I expected to hear a cry of pain as they broke away like dry branches, but the vicar merely watched. One by one, the fingers fell away to the ground.

“I still feel them,” he said. “The stone is cold.”

The silver tear was nearly weightless. Its surface was slippery, difficult to define. Somewhere between a liquid and a solid, and cool to the touch. It was a fragile thing, yet flexible.

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“Now, your end,” the vicar said darkly.

I looked up at him. His eyes fell into the shadow of his heavy brow. There was no sparkle of gleam of fear. Having given away the silver tear, I could see he was ready for death. But one problem remained: I had no weapon with which to kill him.

“A stone, then,” said the vicar. “And make it quick. Please. Please, for my soul, my friend.” He began to cry then, letting his head hang from the wall where it projected. His free hand clenched into a fist.

I walked along the dark corridor, sweeping the torch low and searching for a stone. With every step, Dasoclese’ songs hounded me. He sang of the shining stars, and the gods who forgive, and uplift. The promised feasts, and the never ending dances. They were songs out of some other age, unfamiliar to my ears, yet the sentiment was not alien. I, too, had known such songs of godly praise.

There. It was not much larger than two fists pressed together. As I reached for it, though, I caught sight of the front of it and gasped: a skull. Only, the skull itself was made of stone. It had the rough pebbled surface, and the certain weight of a rock. One side was particularly jagged, and I lifted the torch to paint livid orange across the wall there. I found what I was looking for.

Another body projected out of the wall at odd, unnatural angles. I saw a shoulder, and part of a chest, and two feet. No hands. At the join of the shoulder was a part of the neck, and an unclean, jagged break. Like the skull in my hand, the rest of the poor wretch had turned to stone.

The vicar’s songs brought me back to him.

“Ah,” he said, looking at the thing in my hand. “That must be Falor. Long has it been since he brayed curses at the marching demons. Very long indeed.”

“Do you remember him?”

“You don’t?” said Dasoclese with a strange look. “It matters not. Falor said he would kill me, if ever he got free of the stone. I suppose the circle completes itself. Are you prepared, my friend?”

I glanced at the thing in my hand again. Having a name for that glaring, skeletal face did me no comfort. “Why are you up there?” I had asked the question once before, but the vicar had tried to circle around it.

“My friend, this was not the bargain we struck.”

“We’re not friends, vicar,” I said. If it surprised or hurt him, the fat man’s face didn’t show it.

“There are no friends in Hell,” he said. “You want the truth then? I was envious. Bitterly envious. I spent my life leading the choirs, carrying songs to the peasants in the countryside. My parish was poor, but our songs were beautiful. Yet, year after year, I was overlooked by my superiors. I sought to join them, to leave Vandar and sojourn to Valicia, where I could lead not peasants in choir, but kings. The esteemed and noble pilgrims. Oh, to hear their voices uplifted in praise! But it never happened. And my songs grew bitter, and my flock turned me away. I died,” his free hand twitched vaguely, “out in the hills. Looking for god, I thought. But do you really want to know the truth?”

I listened, waiting.

“I went to the hills to hear the echo. It was the only voice I could stand, at the end. No one else would appreciate my singing. Not the fools in my parish, not the women who once paid me a visit, and certainly not the Ordos superiors who ignored every damned letter I wrote, and spurned the child I trained and sent on pilgrimage to share my song with them!” By the end of his trade, Dasoclese’ voice had grown bitter and shrill. He took a breath, and glared at me. “There’s your truth! Now do it! I’ve suffered long enough here, forced to watch the demons parade by in all their strength and glory. I’ve suffered enough!” The last words were a wail, followed by wracked sobs.

“Do you regret it?” The question surprised him.

“Regret? What does that have to do with it?”

“You were a priest. What lies beyond this place?” He looked at me uncomprehendingly. I said, “Your words are as strange to me, Dasoclese, third vicar of Vandar, as mine are to you. You speak of places I do not know, sing songs I do not know. But what if another life lies beyond this Hell?”

“Oblivion,” Dasoclese said. “I pray it is only oblivion.”

“But if it isn’t?”

He considered that. And said, “Yes. I regret it. My envy, my rage, blinded me. Poisoned my heart. Now please. I beg of you.”

I heard the truth in his words. And hearing that, it wasn’t so hard to do what I had to do.

When it was done, and I was left standing alone in the dark, I wondered if I ought to say a prayer for the vicar. But none came. It was as if my tongue knew no prayers, or as if the memories were away so far now that they could not be summoned. I stood staring at the Dasoclese’ remains, still fused to the wall, and wondering how long before I begged someone else to do the same to me.

And then a curious thing began to happen. The light, leaking from the vicar’s blood that ran in rivulets down the wall, began to shift. It leaped toward me, sudden and bright. And I felt it like a jolt of sudden warmth and energy. I took a darting step back, suddenly alert for danger, but there was none. Nothing at all moved. I might have been alone in the universe, for all I knew then.

I looked down at the arrow wound in my chest. Was it a little brighter? I played my fingers across the wound, but I couldn’t be sure. The blood on the wall faded to dark, and cold. And the hall was emptier without the vicar’s strange, mournful songs. I dropped the bloody rock I’d used to send him on his way, and fled up the corridor, unable to bear that dreadful silence any longer.