The Demon and the City - By Liz Williams Page 0,107

seized the whip by its flaming end and jerked it out of the goddess' hands: it fell sizzling into the snow. The cattle stamped and roared. Mhara sent a thunderbolt out of the circle: Zhu Irzh glimpsed a bloody, glowing hand from the center of the light. It struck Senditreya in the abdomen, and raced down the sides of the chariot. The goddess staggered, but did not succumb. She raised her hand, spoke a word, and a whirling tornado of snow rose up around the circle, seeping into it like a thousand icy needles. The demon heard Robin cry out as the snow lashed her face; her grip on his hand tightened into pain. And then the petals of thousand-flower were falling all around them and Mhara's form glowed more brightly.

The goddess closed her eyes and seemed to shrink within herself. For a fleeting instant, Zhu Irzh thought this signaled her defeat, but he soon realized that Senditreya was only mustering her forces. She reached out a hand and flicked the left-hand cow on its hindquarters. The beast bellowed as if stung by a gadfly and stamped its foot. Immediately, the earth cracked and split. Above Zhu Irzh, the sky itself shuddered: he thought then that it was no more than illusion, and it was the ceiling of Shai itself that was shaking. The cow stamped again, and then a third time, and the ground rippled up like a tsunami. The circle broke. Zhu Irzh was flung sideways, sprawling against Robin. Mhara was hurled to the ground and lay still. The light that had surrounded him faded and was gone. A gaping crack, several feet across, reached from the cow's hoof to just beyond his body.

Senditreya leaped down from the chariot and strode past Zhu Irzh. She picked up the handle of the whip from where it had fallen into the snow and, once more, fire lashed forth. She brought the whip down on Mhara's unconscious form, leaving a long, bloody groove in his side.

"No!" Robin cried. She was on her feet before Zhu Irzh could stop her. She grasped the goddess by a bony arm, but Senditreya flicked her contemptuously away as though Robin were nothing more than a bothersome insect. Robin flew into a snowbank and did not rise again. With a sinking dismay, Zhu Irzh noted that her head lay at an odd angle. There was no sign of Jhai. Chen was again standing, beginning to chant a spell, but his voice was in rags; he had been winded by the fall. The goddess lashed down with the whip once more.

Zhu Irzh knew that he had little chance against a vengeful deity, and when it came to it, whose side was he on, anyway? But then again, Senditreya presumably wasn't very popular with Hell right now, and perhaps some capital could be gained if he were the one to bring her down—but as he was debating the rights and wrongs of the issue, there was a howl of pure fury from behind.

"You fucking cow!" Paravang Roche ran over the snowbank with remarkable speed and launched himself at his goddess. She was too startled to react as he hit her. The dowser's momentum carried them both into the crack, which closed behind them with a reverberating shockwave. Zhu Irzh blinked. Senditreya was gone. The chariot still stood, with two mild-eyed white cattle in its traces. Above them, reached the high vault of Shai. As Zhu Irzh watched, it began to collapse.

Shai seemed to have retreated, and it was so cold, as cold as the void between the stars. It struck through to the demon's bones and beyond, freezing blood and sinew, welding his tongue to the roof of his mouth, his eyes transfixed, the damp warm air in his lungs turned to ice. Then he felt a single note, very sweet and clear, ring through the whole world. Ice that he was, it seemed to shatter him, break him soundlessly apart so that he spun into pieces, fragments of muscle and glassy bone flying in all directions, followed by an unwinding spool of blood. From a distant place, he watched his blood unravel, a dull silver thread bursting into droplets, and he followed it, all the way across the world, higher and higher and then falling like rain. As each drop fell, it impacted on the iron ground and it was as though all the weight of the world descended. Then he was through, seeping beneath the surface