Lawyers in Hell Read Online Free

nature.”
    “Let it be so, then,” says Erra, raising his hand from his hip just enough to forefend any strike from his Sibitti against this boy.  “Keep him with you, and he will learn what heaven and earth and hell are made of.  It shall be our pleasure to show your protégé what the young should see.”
    “We are here to serve your purpose, Erra,” Kur says.  “You and the Seven are generous.  This I knew.  And your message now precedes you into hell.  They shall fear your righteous wrath hereafter.  They will know you whenever you come:  all your plagues, your blades and flames, your floods and storms and ice, your chasms as deep as the underworld itself.  Welcome, Erra and the Sibitti, to my realm.  And now, perhaps a hot meal and some rest for the deserving….”
    Erra saw the Almighty Kur smile down at his boy, who was rubbing the back of one hand where black skin was pimpled and raw:  the first quills of adolescence were beginning to sprout.
    *
     “Are they demons, these Seven?” Eshi demanded of Kur as they sat amid golden smoke billowing down from the mountaintop, awaiting the appointed time.  Below, folk of the tribe strode back and forth until the feast-boards on the flat were bent low with delicacies being laid on by artful hands.
    “The Sibitti?  Not demons.  They are sons of heaven and earth,” Kur told him patiently.  Eshi yet had the shimmer of the innocent:  Kur could see it out of the corner of his eye in the light of heaven’s vault burning overhead.  But the carnage had awakened the adult in the child, and Eshi was beginning to change:  he still rubbed the back of one hand absently with the other; quills, their needle-sharp points plainly visible, were poking their way through his velvety skin.
    Seeing the slaughter had stirred Eshi’s blood.  All too soon, he would be full-grown, a mature Kigali.  Then everything would change between them.  Would they sit here together then – in a year, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand – as they did now, on the hillock where the sulphur springs bubbled, above the tribe’s agora, enjoying the beauty of land and sky, smelling the piquant wind blow down the mountain’s slope?
    “You told me that before, Kur – that the Sibitti are sons of heaven and earth.  But what does that mean?”
    “That means they were born of unions between humans and gods; that they have the attributes of both, and allegiance to neither.  They are the terrifying Seven, personified weapons in service only to Erra, lord of pestilence and destruction, here to visit retribution and havoc among the damned and their fallen gods.”
    “These Sibitti destroyed so wantonly.  How can they be allowed to do that?”
    “Who would stop them, Eshi?”
    “You.”  Eshi looked at him imploringly.  “You could.  You could.”
    “Why would I – or anyone – try to stop them?  The damned are not here on holiday, or to make new lives:  they are here to suffer the fates they have earned.  They live shadow lives here, and die shadow deaths, and are reborn into the torment they deserve – again and again.  And keep it clear in your mind:  the damned are already dead.  You are not.  Life is a precious gift to those who have it, and to those who have lost it.  Gods and men, banished from heaven and earth, are no friends to the Kigali.  The Kigali are no friends to the damned.”
    “But Erra and the Seven are so cruel….  Are we friends to them?”
    “We are the Kigali.  We live here.  We lived here before any of them came; we will live here when they’re gone.  We tolerate the presence of the downcast gods and their damned among us.  We cooperate with those who rule over them from Above.  And we keep the tribe safe.  I do.  You will, in your turn, someday … when you take my place.”
    “My place is by your side – forever, Almighty Kur,” said Eshi softly, and climbed into his lap.
    Kur scratched Eshi’s downy spine, comforting him,