Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back. -- Richard Adams, Watership Down

Siarvin carried Ilaran's body back to the palace. Abi trailed silently behind. Ilaran's blood still dripped on the ground. She stared blankly at the spots of red. Her earlier nausea had completely disappeared. All that remained was an all-consuming numbness. There was no grief or horror or even shock. The events of the last few minutes seemed like a nightmare she'd wake up from soon.

The guards were nowhere to be seen at the palace gate. Lights and cheerful voices in the guardhouse suggested they were all staying inside out of the cold.

It was strange how the mind focused on trivial things during or after a crisis. The guards and their carelessness were the first things to break through Abi's shock. She felt much more angry at them than at anything else that had happened. Tears of rage stung her eyes. She couldn't even tell what she was crying for -- Ilaran, who she'd barely known but who she'd indirectly killed? The corpse she'd dragged out of its dreamless slumber, turned into a weapon, then destroyed for misunderstanding her orders yet believing it was doing exactly what she'd told it to? Herself, for all the mistakes she'd made that had led to this?

Through the grey haze that shrouded the world she saw a figure ahead. As she drew closer she realised it was Irímé. He stared in wide-eyed horror at the scene before him.

"Oh gods, what happened?"

"The assassin stabbed him," Siarvin said shortly. It was the first time he'd spoken since he found Abi and Ilaran. When he first saw Ilaran's body he'd made a sound somewhere between a sob and a wail hastily cut off. That sound followed by his grim silence had somehow been worse than any amount of shouting or accusations.

Abi flinched. It hadn't occurred to her until now that Siarvin didn't know how Ilaran had actually died. How would he? He saw the dead assassin with a blood-stained knife beside her. He saw Ilaran covered in blood. He saw Abi still trying futilely to save Ilaran's life. He did not see the walking corpse, because Abi had already destroyed it.

Hard on the heels of that thought came an equally depressing one. She would have to tell him the truth. It wasn't fair to let him blame someone else, even an assassin, for what she had done.

"Keep Shizuki out of the way," Siarvin told Irímé.

Irímé nodded. All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes were as wide as dinner-plates. He turned and fled into the palace without a word.

Siarvin carried Ilaran through the front door and into the room on the left. Abi followed like a lost puppy. Again and again she tried to gather the courage to speak. Again and again her words turned to ash and choked her before she could open her mouth.

The room on the left turned out to be a bedroom. Everything about it looked as if Ilaran had just stepped out for a short time and would be back at any minute. A coat was draped over the back of a chair. A sewing kit, of all things, sat on the desk. A chess-board that had apparently been abandoned in the middle of a game stood in front of a small table. The table itself was decorated with a plaque written in a foreign language and a candle.

A half-finished letter lay on the bedside table. Abi glanced at it without really meaning to. The last line read, Tell the servants to prepare for my return within the next month. A sudden tightness in her chest suggested her ribs were trying to contract around her lungs. Someone would have to add a post-script to that letter. A post-script that would make the last line bitterly, horribly ironic.

Siarvin set Ilaran down on the bed as gently as if he was made of glass. He disappeared into the small bathroom adjoining the room, leaving Abi alone with the body. In life Ilaran had been one of the tallest men Abi knew. In death he seemed small and more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him look before. His eyes were still partly open, slashes of green in the middle of his chalk-white face. Abi shuddered. Never before had she so thoroughly understood the Saoridhin prejudice against green.

Siarvin came back with a cloth and basin in hand. He leant over the bed and began to wipe the bloody finger-marks off Ilaran's face. Abi had left those as she tried to support his head. Her hands were still red and sticky with Ilaran's undried blood.

"This is a bite-mark." Siarvin spoke quietly but so coldly. He looked up at Abi. She shuddered again at that glare. "It's punctured all the way to the bone. No living person could bite with that much force. So I ask you, what did this?"

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Slowly, with a faltering voice, Abi told him the whole sorry story. The barely-suppressed rage in his eyes made her feel like she had personally murdered Ilaran.

"I warned you," Siarvin said flatly.

Abi agreed sadly, "You did."

"You said your creations had never hurt anyone."

There was nothing she could say to that. Not when the evidence of how horribly, tragically wrong she'd been was right in front of her.

Siarvin dropped the blood-stained cloth into the basin. He stared down at Ilaran's face. With a jolt Abi saw he was crying.

"I can save him," she said without thinking. The minute the words were out of her mouth she realised they were true. She could save him. She didn't know how yet, but she could do it.

Siarvin raised his head and glared at her again. "You've done enough."

"I can save him," she repeated. Some power she hadn't even known she had welled up within her. "I am a phoenix immortal, a descendant of the goddess Abihira[1], and I swear I will bring him back if I have to face all seven faces of Lashkó[2]."

For a long minute the two of them stared at each other. At last Siarvin nodded sharply. He turned away and walked over to the desk by the window. Abi watched, bemused, as he picked up the sewing kit.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he sat down beside the bed and began to thread a needle.

"Stitching up the wound," he said. "No point in you bringing him back for him to bleed to death again immediately afterwards."

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The room was so vast it was impossible to see its walls. You could crane your head back as far as you could and still wouldn't catch a glimpse of the ceiling. A river flowed sluggishly across the stone floor. On an island in the middle of the river stood a throne. And before the throne stood a very unhappy immortal.

"This," said Ilaran grimly, "is an outrage."

Surprisingly the person sitting on the throne nodded. "You don't say."

Ilaran glared at her. He had never given much thought to what happened after death. All the same, he had never expected to open his eyes and find himself in the company of a young woman who took one look at him and exclaimed, "Oh no!" He still didn't know what he'd done to provoke such a reaction. Her explanation was extremely lacking.

"Let me be sure I understand this," Ilaran said -- not that she'd told him much for him to understand. "I am dead, but I'm not in heaven. Or hell," he added as an afterthought. "So in the name of all that's holy, where am I?"

"In the Land of the Dead," the woman said. She held a scythe in her hand and idly twirled it as she spoke. "Well, not the Land of the Dead itself. This is my throne room. I suppose you could call it an entrance hall. If you were an ordinary soul I'd send you on into my realm itself. The problem is you're not going to stay dead."

None of that made any sense to Ilaran. "What do you mean, I'm not going to stay dead? Dead people don't come back to life."

In hindsight that was a very foolish thing to say, considering how he had died.

The woman grimaced. "Unfortunately they do when there's a necromancer around. That woman is an infernal nuisance and she's just going to get worse."

If she was talking about Abihira, he had to agree. "Then why don't you do something to stop her? You're a god, aren't you?"

"No," the woman said. "I'm just a... What's that fancy word I heard recently? Oh yes. I'm a psychopomp. You could call me a guide of sorts."

Did she say she's a psychopath? Ilaran wondered, increasingly bewildered. He was starting to think this might actually be hell after all.

"In short, I'm Death. Technically I could stop her, but I'm forbidden from directly interfering with the living world. My interference could cause even more damage than a zombie apocalypse. Unless Abihira tears reality apart there's nothing I can do."

That was a most unsatisfactory explanation. Ilaran gave up and changed the subject. "Well, what am I to do? Just stand here and wait until I stop being dead?"

How was he going to come back to life anyway? None of Abihira's previous creations were living people. They weren't even sentient. He didn't fancy eternity as a mindless corpse.

"She'll be along to collect you soon," Death said. "In the meantime... I don't suppose you know how to play chess? Winning or losing won't change your fate, of course. You've no idea how many people challenge me to chess in the hope I'll send them back if they win. It'd be a nice change to play against someone without that motive."

Ilaran thought of his abysmal chess skills. "When will she be here? What do you mean by "she'll collect me soon"?"

"I call all times soon," said Death maddeningly. "Oh, and I hope you have no embarrassing memories you don't want her to see. She'll be in your mind, you know."

Certain memories crossed his mind at those words. He blanched. Suddenly staying dead didn't seem so bad. Losing a chess game now seemed like just what he needed to stop him thinking about Abihira rooting through his memories. He could only pray she would keep her mouth closed about whatever she saw there.

"...All right, I'll play. But you'll win."

Death looked surprised. "I don't want you to let me win just because--"

"I won't let you win. You'll win anyway because I'm terrible at chess."

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Siarvin left after he finished stitching Ilaran's neck. Abi sat down in the chair beside the bed. She stared thoughtfully at the body. Obviously souls went somewhere after death. Where did they go? How could she follow?

She closed her eyes and reached out with her magic. Ilaran's body was an empty shell. Yet there was the faintest echo of his soul, like a pathway leading out of the world. She followed that trail. Her body stayed in the chair. Yet some part of her -- her mind, soul, or magic; she didn't know which -- actually walked along the pathway. It was even but narrow. Walls of grey mist surrounded her. She walked slowly, peering blindly ahead.

Without any warning she walked into the equivalent of a closed door. Abi yelped and stumbled back. This might be a magical journey, but the pain in her nose was all too real.

Abi glared at the mist in front of her. She held out her hands and walked forward again. There was that wall. Now that she knew it was there, she could tell it wasn't as solid as it had felt. Her nose throbbed again. Clearly it felt the need to remind her that the wall had indeed been very solid a minute ago.

She leaned against it with all her weight. The wall turned out to be a door when it pivoted inwards. Abi stumbled forwards into a riot of brilliant colours.