Chapter 1

"The black iron horse is traditional."

"Really? With red eyes?"

"You know my brother, then? Mine are emerald."

The pale figure on the black horse galloped through the village at night without slowing. They raced as if chased by the hounds of Hell themselves, the clatter of iron hooves on the short cobble section of the road rattled amongst the few houses, low and dark. Not many lived in the hinterlands, those hardy few that did seemed to huddle against the sides of the mountain range as if they were the detritus of the human sea, washed against the slopes and left to dry in the sun while the sea retreated from the storm-driven high-water mark.

They huddled against the nearness to the congruence that led to the underworld. It wasn't an underworld, of course, but the local populace didn't know that. Nor would it matter, in practical terms. The occasional hellhound — mostly likely only rumor in the lands below these mountains, a tale to scare children — was said to slink through the passes and into the lowlands of Denaria.

In the morning the farming village would wake to the footprints of the hounds, footprints sunken into the cobbles, and wonder.

Horse and rider ran on, across unplowed grassy meadows, jumping broken rock walls and streams, flitting between trees when bands of woods lay in their path. The man noted familiar-seeming trees mixed with ones unknown to him as they flitted past. All the first night, and into the second day, and over the second night the horse ran. In the midst of the night, they came to the first river too broad to jump. In the dim moonlight which filtered through an overcast sky, the man thought he saw steam rising from the horse's metal flanks as he bent to cup water for his thirst.

"Do you tire?" he asked out loud.

"No. I have strength enough to go on at this pace for years. What you see is the result of the heat I shed into the water."

On the far bank, the man gave a slight backward pressure on his seat, and the horse stopped. Together, they looked back in the direction they came, northward and eastward, and saw a sullen red glow lighting the sky from below.

"That seems ominous."

The horse snorted, and began to run again, this time down the high road on the far side of the river, in the direction the river flowed, away from the mountains.

On the third day, McAllister overtook peasants moving down the road, an old wagon with solid wheels trundling behind two men. Both cowered when they heard the horse approach. Both trembled as the horse stopped.

"Men, how far to the city?" McAllister demanded. Receiving only blank looks in return, he realized there was a language barrier too great to overcome in the time he had, given he did not know how close his pursuit might be. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he dug his bare heels into the horse's flank, and instantly regretted it.

"You wouldn't hurt my sides even if you were wearing boots with steel-clad heels." The horse held a note of amusement in its 'voice' and resumed a canter. McAllister didn't speak while the pain ebbed.

A moment later he gritted, "Clothes, weapons, boots, and a saddle would be nice." A few moments after that, he asked, "Is the form the semblance of an iron horse, or is it truly living metal?"

"I truly consist of metal and some other substances. If I build up too much heat, I can melt. After I run, stay clear of my breath. I have been keeping the heat I develop away from my skin and you, and exhaust it only from my nostrils for the present."

McAllister nodded. "Could you change your shape enough to give me a saddle?"

The horse stopped running, all four hooves splayed wide, legs straight, plowing small furrows in the dirt of the road. For a moment, the not-animal stood stock still, then the ears rotated back toward its rider, and the neck turned, presenting a baleful emerald eye. McAllister was certain that the horse could see him in its vision, though other horses would not see to the side so well.

"No," the horse 'said', quietly.

McAllister nodded a second time. "I did not mean offense."

"I ... did not take offense," the horse 'stated', the pause noticeable. "We should come to know each other better, and avoid such mistakes in the future."

McAllister nodded. "Then our alliance, made in chance and opportunity as it was, seems good to you?"

Again, the horse snorted, a ripple of sound, somehow sibilant in its vibrancy. "I will tell you a story."

The miles passed, and still McAllister waited for the story, wondering if he could perhaps brain a rabbit with a stone before he died of starvation, when the horse 'spoke' again. "In that place we left from, time is difficult to measure. Yet, I think it was some forty years ago by my reckoning when a man, similar to you, came to my brother, and formed an alliance with him. Armed with some secret knowledge, he was banished to Hell by a magic user who found him ... inconvenient. On the way out, he managed to steal some things of value that he deemed important. My brother aided him, and in a show of main force, crashed through the Gates of Hell and escaped."

McAllister considered this for a while, and then nodded. "Well, then, I understand the motivation."

"Man, where are we?"

McAllister started with, "I wanted to ask the peasantry, but I could not make myself understood..."

A moment or two passed, while McAllister was silent in thought. "We did not leave by the gate."

More miles passed, and the horse broke the silence, gently. "Who can say how many planes and worlds there may be? I don't know the worlds outside Hell."

McAllister sighed. "Are we to wander aimlessly, then, without a goal? For if there is more than one plane and world touched upon by Hell, there must be a great many, since the place is large."

Again, the horse was gentle. "You were damned. Why should you go back to the world of your birth? Revenge? Unfinished works? Things are not as they may seem to be, Man."

McAllister bowed his head, and did not speak.

"Well, if we are to travel together, I should know your name, horse."

A subtle shift in the horse's gait bespoke of ... wariness, of caution, McAllister decided. Neutrally, the horse offered, "What name would you call me by?"

"I had thought of 'Black'."

The horse considered this a moment, and gave a slight shake of the head. McAllister was confident it was a negation. "Onyx?" Another shake. "Sable?"

The horse seemed to try it out. "Sable. I like that."

McAllister completed the exchange of names. "I am McAllister."

Together, they moved down the road, the horse's hooves beating a staccato rhythm that rolled across the green countryside so like the world of the man's home.

Some time later, the two approached a good-sized town under the setting sun. For the last few hours, they had ridden through well-kept farms and along good roads. Each successive town they'd passed through was bigger than the previous, with obvious signs of wealth evident in the architecture. People they passed reacted strangely to the unclothed man on the back of a large horse.

McAllister simply ignored them.

The pangs of hunger grew. McAllister looked for food to steal, having seen no game from the back of the iron horse. As the sun sank below the horizon, McAllister gave into his last resort and nudged the horse toward a building with every characteristic of a church. Neck-high walls of cut and mortared stone framed a small yard. The building behind had a steep roof, with small, narrow windows holding the first glass McAllister had seen in this world so similar to his own.

"What is this building?"

"It appears to be a church," he replied.

"McAllister, you should know that our kind is not generally welcomed by gods."

"I don't know your kind," he said then, "only you."

Once again the horse turned to look at him. "You are of my kind now, whatever you may have been before. I can sense the Fire within you."

"Still, the pursuit nears," he said pragmatically, choosing to overlook the curious statement, a lift of a dark eyebrow under black hair.

"Very well," the horse answered.

With a shiver, McAllister wanted to be indoors. Dismounting, he walked to the heavy door, and stood close. He lifted the large ring, letting it fall with a booming echo. He did this twice more, and was rewarded with the muffled sound of approaching feet.

A small port in the door opened, and a young man's face peered out. With only McAllister's face and torso, and the nose of the horse beside him visible from the port, the door opened to reveal a somewhat ordinary farm lad, brown hair over the square hairless face and stocky body, in dress familiar to McAllister — breeches, boots, and a belted shirt. The open-faced man opened his mouth, and gibberish spilled out. McAllister stood, impassive before the wash of verbiage. More gibberish followed, and then the young man, clearly frustrated, turned and walked into the courtyard.

When neither horse nor rider followed, he stopped after only a few strides, and turned. The hand gesture was unmistakable, though the words were still incomprehensible. Horse and rider looked at one another, and McAllister shrugged. Both tried to fit through the doorway together, and McAllister backed off, while the horse shouldered him aside.

McAllister felt the sharp flare of new scrapes, prompting him to give a sarcastic bow and flourish, ushering the horse in. Though McAllister would have said the door was too narrow for the horse, the iron torso seemed to shimmer and stretch longer, becoming thinner — but only for a few inches on either side of the door, the stretched zone moving down the creature's flank as it moved past the doorway.

McAllister froze, watching this effect. He could not say why it should surprise him, having so recently been imprisoned in a place constructed nearly exclusively of what he had always thought of as the supernatural. With a start, he shook himself, and stepped through the door, pushing it shut behind him, and dropping the bar. When he turned back, there was no sign of the other man, only the horse.

McAllister stood by Sable's shoulder and waited. Only a short while passed, before the other came back out, with a small black-iron dipper of water in his hand. He offered it to McAllister, and looked impatient when McAllister appeared indecisive. Finally, the other stamped his foot, and McAllister watched him take a small sip, and drink.

Gratefully, McAllister took the dipper, intending to drink deeply, his last drink had been from a stream they'd crossed in haste. Yet, as he sipped, he was held as if frozen, with the dipper to his lips and the tiniest amount of water within his mouth. With the oddest sensation of scrutiny he'd ever borne, greater than when he first arrived in Hell, he felt as if he were being peeled apart layer by layer, weighed and measured, as if fingers were run over every inch of his body. Something tickled the hair in his armpits, then the hair on his chest and back, and, quicker than he could react, a very impersonal touch in a very personal area. The knowledge that no one had moved made it stranger still.

The tactile inspection moved down his body to his feet, and then back upward, lingering for a moment on his testes. Embarrassed, though he could not move, he began to stiffen. A sudden sense of amusement was directed his way, and then it seemed to him someone was explaining something to him, filling the room of his mind.

McAllister could not say when the words began to make sense, but he came to the realization that he had understood the words for some time.

"Well, it's about time. I was beginning to question your intelligence." The source was voiceless, similar to how the horse and McAllister communicated. "Your body was formed about your spirit as you left that place, but the forming was not complete. I've corrected some of that, along with some other things. I can't do too much about the low intelligence," and here there was a definite sniff, with an underlying sense of amusement. "But you have to keep yourself whole. Don't undo my hard work. Now give some of my water to your friend."

McAllister numbly realized the world was moving around him again and carefully offered the water to the horse.

A moment after the horse's lips touched the dipper, McAllister had the strangest sense of a whispered conversation that he was not party to, and that both Sable and the latest ethereal person he'd just met were laughing at him.

The churchman's eyes had bugged when McAllister offered the dipper to the horse, but before he could say anything, a deep gong sounded somewhere else in the church.

McAllister stepped forward, a glint of amusement in his eye. "Drink some now, Priest." Startled because he understood McAllister the other studied him sharply and then reached out with trembling hand to take the ladle. Closing his eyes, he visibly steeled himself, and then took a drink. No more than a sip, and then he smiled over the dipper at McAllister.

Looking at the water, he gave a wry grin, and said, "Well, I'll never question my faith again."

McAllister nodded. "I would know the name of this deity, if you would say it. I believe I am in her debt." He pronounced the pronoun with a clear tone of question in his voice.

"Her." The priest spoke authoritatively. "None have ever seen her, but our Goddess is the Child, the Mother, and the Crone."

A dozen comments flitted through his mind, but McAllister kept his silence, nodding in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner. He could swear the horse still laughed at him.

The priest invited them into the dressed-stone church, and McAllister was again treated to the sight of the horse slipping through a narrow doorway, and into a hallway. Fascinated by the sight, McAllister followed again, through the large body of the church and the rows of benches, around the altar, and into a small room at the back where it was obvious the priest lived.

The priest sat him at a table, and the horse stood by a cold fireplace. Bread was set before McAllister and a ceramic mug of water also. The priest turned toward the horse, and, after a deep breath began, "When you first entered, I'd thought you were of the Damned. I didn't wonder how an animal came to be damned, though if any'd asked, I'd have said you were carrying your master when he was lost. But you are no mere animal, this I knew when the Mother allowed you communion. You seem to be made of metal, but the metal is alive, or is of no ordinary blacksmith. And you must be no ordinary Damned, for the Mother didn't reject you."

To McAllister he said, "Did you hear the gong? One like it is given to every Church of the Mother. Long ago in Prisan some young theologist made a detector. When our Goddess in her Mother guise manifests within a few dozen yards of the detector, it sounds. The closer she appears, the louder the sound." Both his tone and the gesture he made with his hands showed his surprise that it had worked.

Sable remarked, in her private way, "He seems rather young. Do you suppose he will last long after we leave?"

McAllister swallowed the bread he was chewing carefully, the first food this body had taken, if the goddess were to be believed. Whatever changes she had made to his body had restored his appetite, so he ate at a measured pace to avoid cramps. "Do you suppose she will fight a rearguard action for us?" His manner of asking was the same as the horse's, which was to say, silent.

Aloud he said, "I must leave, for the longer I stay, surely the closer my pursuit nears. Do you have clothing I could beg?"

The young churchman nodded, a shock of brown hair floating above his brow while the forehead under it moved violently. "Your appearance here in Denane has given me the greatest gift I could ever hope for — the Mother has spoken with me directly." His face fell a small amount, and he continued, "She's told me I've an unpleasant task to perform, and it will be soon. She says I must hold back and destroy the scouts of the Armies of Hell while you make your escape. Anything I can give you, you're welcome to. Excuse me. I'll go find you some clothing."

McAllister and Sable turned to look at each other in surprise while the young man bolted from the room. "We owe him something, and the goddess, too, if they will do this for us," the horse said in the silent manner of speaking.

"Aye," McAllister said. "But what's appropriate?"

A moment later, the priest entered the room, an armload of clothing preceding him. He dumped it all on the ground before McAllister, and started handing him articles from the heap.