“I know you,” he said. “I have faced you many times.”
Death gave him a long stare.
NO YOU HAVEN'T.
"I assure you-
YOU HAVE FACED MEN. IF YOU HAD FACED ME, I ASSURE YOU . . . YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN.
“But what happens to me now?”
Death shrugged.
DON'T YOU KNOW? he said, and disappeared.
“Wait!”
Fri'it ran at the wall and found to his surprise that it offered no barrier. Now he was out in the empty corridor. Death had vanished.
And then he realized that it wasn't the corridor he remembered, with its shadows and the grittiness of sand underfoot.
That corridor didn't have a glow at the end, that pulled at him like a magnet pulls at an iron filing.
You couldn't put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place when the inevitable just went and waited.
And this was it.
Fri'it stepped through the glow into a desert. The sky was dark and pocked with large stars, but the black sand that stretched away to the distance was nevertheless brightly lit.
A desert. After death, a desert. The desert. No hells, yet. Perhaps there was hope.
He remembered a story from his childhood. Unusually, it wasn't about smiting. No one was trampled underfoot. It wasn't about Om, dreadful in His rage. It was worse. It was about what happened when you died . . . the journey of your soul.
They said: you must walk a desert . . .
“Where is this place?” he said hoarsely.
THIS IS NO PLACE, said Death .
. . . all alone . . .
“What is at the end of the desert?”
JUDGEMENT .
. . . with your beliefs . . .
Fri'it stared at the endless, featureless expanse.
“I have to walk it alone?” he whispered. "But . . . now, I'm not sure what I believe-
YES?
AND NOW, IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME-
Fri'it took a deep breath, purely out of habit. Perhaps he could find a couple of rocks out there. A small rock to hold and a big rock to hide behind, while he waited for Vorbis . . .
And that thought was habit, too. Revenge? Here?