Black Sun Rising

15

Oh, the joy of flying! Swimming through the air with long, sweeping motions—pulling himself through clouds, overtaking birds, thrilling to the sure caress of the wind upon his body. And underneath him, glimpsed through an occasional break in the cloud cover: Briand. Home. Only now it seemed different—a fairy place, made up of light and music and fine brush strokes of color. So delicately constructed that it seemed to him a strong rain might wash it all away. Houses dissolving into gray and ocher streams, trees bleeding green and amber into the muddy streets—even people dissolving into so much color, like a watercolor painting put under the faucet. His mother and father liquefying into streams of pink and brown and green, spiraling into the flood and down, down, down into the secret storm drain beneath the city that lay waiting for it all, ready to swallow up all those beautiful tones . . . he could see Briand’s colors running down into the river now, to meet with the dilute hues of Kale and Seth, the harsh, bright tones of Jaggonath, the cold ash-gray tones of the distant mountains. All swirling together, mixed by the river’s harsh current. What a glorious vision! And he with no concern but the moment’s pleasure, mated to the wind, flying high above the chromatic floodwaters, into-

Into-

Darkness. Ahead of him. A point of blackness, searing in its intensity. A tiny fragment of no-light in this universe of color, a blotch on the fairy landscape. He shuddered and banked to the right, looking away. The blackness hurt his eyes, burned them like a sun might. Better not to look at it. Better to focus on the colors of the sky, the myriad hues of life. Better to-

It was back. In front of him.

Startled, he lost his rhythm. For a moment the winds had hold of him, and they were suddenly no longer the friendly breezes he had been riding, but the harsh staccato blasts of a storm front. He floundered. Ahead of him was that bit of burning blackness, no longer a mere speck amidst silver-gray clouds, but a full-fledged hole in the rapidly darkening sky. And inside it—or beyond it—lay something in waiting, whose thoughts were so loud that they screamed like thunder in his ears. He tried to fly away, but the winds had turned against him. Tried to slow his flight, but the blackness was like a vacuum, and it sucked him ever closer. At last, having exhausted all other means of escape, he tried to focus on the world he had left behind—that other world, the colorless one, the one that made him want to kill himself from boredom— because if he could remember it, he knew he would return to it. But the chemicals coursing in his bloodstream were too strong for that. He couldn’t go back. He was flying—had always flown—knew no reality, other than flying. And the blackness, which spread itself hungrily before him.

Terrified, he fought to escape it.

It was larger, now. It took up half the sky, blotting out the sun like a giant storm cloud. He clawed at the air desperately, trying to pull himself away. But when he turned, it turned. When he reversed his direction, it appeared before him. Hungry. Implacable. Devouring all the color in the sky, the very air that supported him. He fell into a pocket of hurricanic turbulence, felt the stormwinds battering him closer and closer to his nemesis. That great maw of darkness which had almost devoured the sky, which would certainly devour the land, which so palpably hungered to devour him . . .

And as he touched it, as he knew it for what it was, he screamed. Consumed by terror, desperate to be heard. Forgetting, in his final moments, that the same narcotic which had given him flight had also disconnected his consciousness from his flesh, thus making a real scream impossible. He screamed, and screamed . . . and was silent. His body lay unmoving atop a patchwork quilt, a thick fold of calico clutched between his frozen fingers. No one came to help him.

Who can hear the death screams of a disembodied soul?

The city called Briand was solidly fortified, as befit a travelers’ sanctuary that served the main trade route between Jaggonath and the northern portlands. A double stockade of roughly hewn posts hid most of the complex from view, but over its jagged top Damien could make out the roof of at least one sizable hostelry, steeply angled in the manner of northern houses. Even that limited view made it clear what manner of place Briand was. The roof was overthatched with hellos thorns—said to repel the undead—and the two dormer windows which were visible were barred with iron, worked in a protective motif.

As if mere walls could keep out a true demon, he thought grimly. As if bars made a difference to blood-wraiths.

“We stop?” Senzei asked.

Damien looked at Ciani—at Fray, he corrected himself—and tried to assess her condition. It was difficult to see past the various elements of her disguise, to judge just how tired she was. Hard to see Ciani herself, between the makeup that had altered her countenance and the fog of despair that enshrouded her soul.

She could go on, he decided at last. They all could go on. And there was something to be said for pushing toward their goal as quickly as possible, especially with winter coming on. But the thought of possibly being stuck outside when night fell was not a pleasant one. Damien alone could have handled it—God knows, he had camped out often enough—and Senzei, perhaps, could have coped. But not Ciani. Not now. Not when night was so very threatening to her. They had to safeguard her soul as well as her body, and the former was so terribly fragile . . .

“We stop,” he said firmly, and he thought he saw relief in her eyes.

There was a guard at the main gate, polite but efficient; after a brief interrogation they were permitted to pass within the protective walls. Damien noticed sigils burned into the wood, ward-signs etched into the heavy posts. Most of them were useless, he suspected. For every faeborn consultant that sold legitimate Workings, there would be at least a dozen con artists imitating the trade. And knowing that, to be sure, a dae such as Briand must buy twelve times as much protection.

He reflected upon the cost of that and muttered, “There’s good money in sorcery here.”

Senzei managed a halfhearted grin, and nodded toward the building ahead of them. “Don’t you think she knew that?”

Following Senzei’s gaze into the compound, he saw one of Ciani’s wards guarding the hostelry entrance. Finely worked, beautiful even in its quiescence, it occupied a place of honor high over the arched lintel. They must have paid a pretty penny for it, he reflected; Ciani’s work didn’t come cheap.

Then he saw her face—the total lack of recognition, as she gazed upon her own handiwork as if it were that of a stranger—and something tightened inside him. As if for the very first time he finally understood just what had been done to her.

They’ll die for this, Cee. I promise you. The bastards will die.

As with all such sanctuaries, the dae was a sprawling conglomerate of disparate buildings, linked together by warded walkways, and—in the case of several two-story buildings—sturdily enclosed bridges. Once inside the dae, one need not leave it for any reason. Like most such sanctuaries, Briand would have space to house a trade caravan when necessary, as well as sufficient food to feed its people and all the supporting services—practical, aesthetic, and hedonistic—that they might require. Private domiciles no doubt clustered about its back walls like satellites, each linked to the whole by a private walkway. But for all its space and supplies, Briand would be a sterile place. All daes were, regardless of location. There was profit enough to be made off a traveler’s need that men might come here to garner it, but no other reason was sufficient to draw people to such a place—and even the dae-keepers often left, once their fortune was secure. Briand was no more than a stopover point—even for those who had made it their permanent home. The portal warded by Ciani’s Working was clearly the main guest entrance. Damien and Ciani unpacked the horses while Senzei went off in search of a groom. After some moments he reappeared, a pair of lanky boys in tow. Teenagers, both of them, with the nervous, uptight gestures of boys whose pubescent energies had not yet found safe outlet. They need a good night out on the town, Damien thought. Then, upon reflection, added, They need a good town.

It was dark inside the hostelry, despite the light of day that still burned outside; a crackling fire in the center of the large common room seemed to be the only source of light. Lanterns hung unlit on posts set about the outer walls, waiting for some hand to kindle them. No doubt when more travelers began to arrive—when the sun was nearer to setting, and the dangers of the night that much nearer to rising—the place would be well lit for their comfort. Now, empty of patrons, unattended, it had somewhat the aspect of a tomb. “No windows,” Damien muttered. “What did you expect?” “I saw some upstairs.”

“Farther from the earth,” Senzei told him. “Fae is weaker there. It still means a risk . . . but if some rich guest demands a view . . .” He shrugged.

Damien looked about at the thick timber walls, the heavily plastered ceiling, and shook his head. “Do they really think this will stop a demon?”

“If the guests believe it,” Senzei countered, “doesn’t that give it some power?” “Enough to matter?”

He had no time to answer. A woman had entered the room, with a thick black ledger book in one hand and a coarse pencil in the other. Middle-aged, with hair that was gray about the temples and forehead, drawn tightly back into a bun. She seemed distressed but managed a businesslike nod to serve as welcome. Crossing the room quickly, she spared a quick sideways glance to assess the state of the fire. And nodded, satisfied.

“Name’s Kanadee,” she said brusquely. Offering no gesture of physical contact, merely a brief nod of welcome. She reached up to brush back a stray lock of hair from out of her eyes, then opened up the book and took their names. Senzei Reese, Damien told her. Fray Vanning. Reverend Damien Vryce. She looked up at that entry, and her eyes searched his face for . . . what? It happened too quickly for Damien to read her expression; by the time he noticed it, she was all business once again. “You’ll be wanting rooms for the night,” she said. Now that Damien was listening for it, he could hear a faint tremor echoing her speech. Her cheek glistened moistly in the firelight—from recent tears?

“Please,” Damien said. “Adjoining, if that’s possible.”

She studied the others for a moment, assessing them quickly. Ciani was clearly acceptable; Senzei received a brief frown, then a nod. “Forty a night, per head. That includes dinner. Bell’s at six—and-half, serving’s at seven. Other food anytime you like, but it’s extra. Call into the kitchen, if there’s no one out here.” She nodded toward a heavy door at the far end of the common room. “Only three of you?” Damien nodded. “Good. Lucky number. Tam’ll take your things up, get you settled.” She pulled a bell out of her apron pocket; a tangle of cords and keys fell to the floor. “Any questions, you ask for me. See?” She rang the bell sharply, then stopped to recover her possessions. Amulets with sigil signs, keys with horoscopic symbols etched into them, a plain but finely worked image of the Earth...she had it all back in her pocket by the time a spindly young boy appeared, and she gestured him toward their packs. “Take ‘em up to the east suite,” she ordered. “Settle them in, and show ‘em the place.”

He began to gather their bags, groaning as the weight of Senzei’s books joined all the rest on his shoulder. But despite his obvious discomfort, he would let none of the travelers carry their own. “He’s a good boy,” she told them. Again, there was an echo of sorrow behind her words—so fleeting that Damien nearly missed it, but so poignant that it seemed to dim the light about them. Had she lost a child recently? Or, closer yet (he struggled to define what he had sensed, to put a name to it), was she contemplating losing one? “You tell him what you need, he’ll get it for you. See?”

Sometimes, hungering for a symbol, followers of the One God would carry an earth-disk. Sometimes the need for a material symbol of their faith was simply too great, and their understanding of the Church’s goals too limited . . . and that was the most acceptable option. The Church had learned to tolerate it.

He muttered a Knowing—and his breath caught in his throat as the nature of her suffering became thickly visible about her. As he read its cause.

For a moment he hesitated. His first duty lay with his friends . . . except that they wouldn’t really need him until dawn, when it was time to move again. Ciani’s wards alone should be enough to protect them in this well-guarded place, and it was possible that one or two of the other charms that had been nailed to the wall might actually Work. While he . . . he hungered to be active. To be needed. To do something.

“Go on up,” he said to his companions. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Her business done, Mes Kanadee began to withdraw, back the way she had come. But when she saw that he was following, she stopped and confronted him. “I told you, Tam’ll take care of you. There’s work I have to see to—”

“I’m a priest,” he said softly. “And a Healer. Will you let me help you?”

She seemed about to say something sharp—and then the defense crumbled, and exhaustion took over. Despair. She protested weakly, “What can you do? If prayers alone would suffice . . .”

“We use more than prayers, sometimes.”

Startled, she looked up at him. Deep into his eyes. No assessment there this time, only wonder. And not a little fear. He could see the struggle raging within her—her hunger for hope in any form, versus a daeborn distrust of strangers. Her fingers tightened on the ledger book, as if feeling his title through the thick leather cover. Reverend. Her church. The title seemed to calm her. Surely a priest could be trusted.

At last she lowered her eyes, and he saw her tremble.

“God willing you can,” she whispered. “God willing anyone can.” She opened the heavy door, and motioned for him to follow. “Come. I’ll show you.”

The boy lay still on a rumpled bed, fingers clutching the quilt beneath him. His skin was pale, but that was typical of dae-folk. His complexion betrayed his adolescence, while his mussed and untrimmed hair—and less than aesthetic clothing—hinted at a vague air of defiance. Personal artifacts littered the room, making it hard to walk to the bed without knocking into something. Sigils pinned to the wall ranged from the fae-signatures of popular songwriters to symbols with more arcane overtones, and a few that seemed touched with genuine power. Dark power, Damien noted, and tainted with the chaos so typical of adolescence. But power nonetheless. The boy was trying to Work.

She saw him gazing at the walls and blushed. “He had . . . interests. I didn’t know whether to try to stop it, or how . . .” But now it’s too late, she seemed to imply. And if he courted some Power that he shouldn’t have, and hurt himself in the process, am I not to blame for failing to prevent it?

“Let me take a look at him,” Damien said quietly.

He sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to jar the boy as he did so. The youth’s breathing was regular, and his color—despite the daeborn pallor—was good. He took the boy’s nearer hand in his own and tried to dislodge it from the quilt it clutched. The fingers were stiff, but they did open; that ruled out most legal drugs as the source of the problem.

“How long?” he asked.

“Day and a half now.” Her hands twined nervously in her apron, knuckles white. “We found him in the morning, just like this. We’ve . . . tried to feed him. He won’t take anything. Even liquids. I had a doctor in. He sent for a specialist. Should arrive by tomorrow. To set up an IV, so we don’t lose him . . . but they don’t know what to do about the coma, Father. They don’t even know what caused it. I had a Healer, too—he was a pagan, Father, but what else was there to do? There was no one available from the Church, and I was desperate.” Her tone was begging for forgiveness.

“Did he find anything?”

“He couldn’t say. Or wouldn’t say. I shouldn’t have asked him,” she said miserably.

He asked it as gently as he could, but it had to be asked. “Any prolonged drug use that you know of?”

She hesitated. He sensed her gaze flitting across the walls, from sigil to sigil. “No,” she said at last. “He tried some things, once or twice. Out of curiosity. Don’t they all?”

“Which ones?” he pressed. “Do you know?”

She looked away, and bit her lower lip in concentration. “Blackout, I think. Maybe cerebus, once. Maybe slowtime. We said it was all right—at least to try them, just once—provided he purchased them in Jaggonath. On the open market. Was that wrong?” Her tone was a plea—for forgiveness, understanding, absolution. “We didn’t think we could stop him.”

“If that’s what he took, it’s not what’s got him now.” He lifted the limp hand a few inches above the blanket, and gently let it fall. “Jaggonath’s drugs are strictly regulated; if he kept to that market, it’s unlikely he met with any surprises. And his limbs are pliant,” he pointed out. “If he was currently in a drugged state, that wouldn’t be true. There’s a paralytic in all Jaggonath legals.” He looked up at her. “The doctor couldn’t tell you anything at all?”

“He didn’t know. They’re going to take him to a hospital in the city, with better facilities. But travel time . . .” She looked around, and shook her head helplessly. “All these fae-things. Could it be that I mean, could he have called up something . . .” That fed on him, her tone said desperately. That took his mind away from us.

“I’ll take a look,” Damien said gently.

Such a Working came easily to him; it was what the Church had trained him to do. Fae gathered in response to his will—slightly tainted by the presence of adolescent instability, but his will was enough to give it order—and linked him to the boy in a personal Knowing. Allowing him to peer deep into the youth’s soul and, hopefully, read the cause of this unconsciousness.

But to his surprise, he met resistance: a wall of fae, tightly woven, that forced him to keep his distance. Unusual. He probed at it, trying to find its weak spot. Trying to channel through. But the barrier was remarkably balanced in structure—remarkably unlike the boy himself, or anything such a youth might have conjured. Resilient, it gave just enough to diffuse his aggressive energies; he couldn’t seem to pierce it, no matter hard he tried.

He added prayer to his efforts. Unlike most pagan faiths, his Church didn’t believe in a God who made personal appearances on demand; nevertheless, prayer was a powerful focus for any Working. Strangely—and inexplicably—the resistance seemed to grow even stronger as he did so. As if something in his prayer had added its strength to that seemingly impenetrable barrier.

That’s impossible, he thought darkly. Patently impossible. Even if a priest had Worked the damned thing in the first place . . . I’d be able to read that. Or some kind of personal signature, at least.

Who would do such a thing? What purpose would it serve?

Frustrated, he turned his attention to the boy’s corporeal shell. But every aspect of the body was just as it should be, save for its comatose state. He spent a long time studying the boy’s flesh, on every level possible, and at last had to concede defeat. There was no apparent biological damage. And as for the boy’s soul . . . that was unreachable. Unless he could come up with some new plan of attack. Hit it from a different angle.

Ciani could have handled this. Ciani could have dispelled such a barrier in half the time it took me just to recognize it. Damn those creatures, and their hellhound hunger! Even without the fae she could have told us who might have set up such a thing. Because it isn’t the boy who’s behind this. It can’t be the boy. But then who? Or what? And, most important: Why?

“Is it your son?” he asked gently.

“My firstborn,” she whispered. “I . . .” She blinked back tears. Couldn’t speak for a moment. Then: “Can you help him, Father? Is there any hope at all?”

He let the last of his Knowing fade; his head was pounding from the strain of his efforts, and from the unaccustomed taste of failure. He managed to keep his voice steady as he told the woman, “There’s nothing my skills can do. That doesn’t mean the doctors won’t be able to help.” He could hear the exhaustion in his voice, but managed somehow to keep it sounding strong. She needed his strength. “I’m sorry, my child. I wish it could be otherwise.” She wept in his arms for a long, long time.

Sitting in the darkest corner of the common room, the three travelers went unnoticed. Nearly two dozen guests had taken shelter in the dae’s protective confines before the gates were shut at sunset, but for the most part they were a travel-weary, introverted lot, who offered no threat to the small company’s privacy. One particularly large group of men had been drinking since dusk, and occasionally a voice would rise from among them to dominate all others in the common room, underscoring some vital point in their debate—but in general they were a tight, self-contained social unit, who might acknowledge a comely waitress or two but who otherwise had no interest in the people surrounding them. The other guests had collected in couples and trios and were far more interested in the central fire and its warmth than in the three travelers who had chosen to isolate themselves in the shadows of a far corner.

“It didn’t go well?” Senzei asked quietly.

“It didn’t go at all.” Damien took a deep drink from the tankard before him. Briand ale; not the best, but any alcohol was welcome. “There was some sort of barrier . . . I’ve never Seen anything like it before. Couldn’t get through it, no matter what I did.” He took another drink and sighed. “It seemed deliberate; a Worked obstruction. That was the oddest thing. I mean, who would have set it up? And why? The boy didn’t have that kind of skill, I’m sure of it. But who would? And why?” He took another deep drink of the ale, winced at the bitterness. “If we assume that his problem wasn’t just a medical one—that something faeborn hurt the boy—the question is, what sort of demon would do that and then bother to cover its tracks? And do it so vulking well!”

“Careful,” Senzei warned—meaning his volume, his anger, his profanity. “You did what you could. That’s all any of us can do.”

“If only-” But he stopped himself. Just in time. If only Ciani’s skills were whole, he wanted to say. She could have read that boy like a book. She could have fixed him up in half the time it took me to confirm the problem. He ached for her loss—and for their loss, having to travel without her skills to protect them. God heaven, everything would be so much easier if she we whole . . . but then again, if she were whole, they would still be in Jaggonath. They could make love in her Jew Street apartment with no more thought for the future than a passing concern over whether they had enough food for breakfast in the morning.

I think I was falling in love with you. In a way that I haven’t experienced before. Why couldn’t we have had just a little more time to see where it was headed before this happened?

He started to turn to Senzei—to ask him for advice on the boy’s condition—when a noise from the far end of the room caught his attention. He turned toward the door—and stiffened as he saw it opening. As he heard the creaking of its thick metal hinges and the jangling of its disengaged lock.

“Don’t the daes-” he whispered.

“Yes.” Senzei nodded sharply. “The doors are locked after sunset. An exception would be . . . unusual.”

One of the night guards had squeezed inside, and he traded hurried words with the dae’s keeper. Mes Kanadee hesitated, then nodded; the door swung fully open. Darkness poured in—and with it a man whose movement was so fluid, so graceful, that it was hard to believe he couldn’t have simply flowed in through cracks in the door, had he wanted to.

All heads in the place were turned toward him, all eyes assessing this man for whom the rules of the dae had been broken. But the Keeper stared back at them as if daring her guests to protest. One by one they turned away and went back to their former conversations. Just a man, her gaze seemed to say. What business is it of yours, anyway? Damien whispered the key to an Obscuring under his breath, so that her eyes passed over his table as though it were empty; he had no intention of confronting her, nor did he intend to relinquish his right to study the stranger in secret.

The newcomer was a tall man, slender, who carried himself with easy elegance. Handsome, refined—attractive to women, Damien decided—he moved with a grace that seemed to come naturally to him. His clothes were simple but well made, unadorned but clearly expensive. A calf-length tunic of fine silk brushed the top of glove-soft boots, accentuating his height and rippling with his every movement. Midnight blue, the color of evening, His hair was soft and simply dressed, not in the complex cut and curls of modern fashion but caught back in a simple clip at the nape of his neck. Save for that one piece, there was no gold visible on him, nor jewelry of any kind. Or any other thing of obvious value, other than a slender sword with a heavily embroidered sheath that swung at his side . . . and the pistol tucked into his belt. Damien worked a minor Knowing—and hissed in surprise. In disbelief.

“UnWorked,” he whispered.

Senzei nodded. “I know.”

That means . . .

They looked at each other.

“I’ll check,” Senzei muttered, and as soon as he was sure that the stranger wouldn’t see him, he slipped away to go to their rooms. Damien turned back—and saw Ciani’s eyes on him. Curious. Suffering. Anxious to know.

He tried to explain to her. About firearms, and how dangerous they were. About technology in general, and the power of human fear, and how sometimes when there was a physical process that a man couldn’t watch happen—because it was too small, or happened too fast, or was simply out of his sight—his fears could foul it up, and cause it to backfire. So that such a gun might well blow up in its owner’s hand at the moment he most needed it to function. Which meant that no man would carry such a thing, unless he’d had it Worked for safety. Or unless he was a total fool, who thrived on senseless risk. Or unless . . .

Unless he was an adept.

He stiffened at the thought. Eager and wary, in equal measure. He had a nose for suspicious coincidence, and this man’s arrival stank of it.

The odds against one of that kind just happening to walk in here are . . . incredible. So either he isn’t what he seems to be, or there’s some reason he showed up tonight. And I can’t think of one that I’d like to hear.

Senzei slid back into his seat, a small black notebook clutched in one hand. “Nothing,” he whispered. “None of the descriptions match. If he’s an adept, he isn’t from this region. Or else we just didn’t know about him . . .”

“Unlikely,” Damien muttered. That kind of skill was hard to hide, especially in the childhood years. And news of adeptitude traveled fast. If the man wasn’t described in Ciani’s notes, he wasn’t from this area.

Carefully, Damien worked a Knowing. Very carefully. The stranger might take it in his stride that other Workers would wish to identify him . . . or he might consider it an invasion of his privacy and exact revenge. Adepts were a touchy lot.

He relaxed the Obscuring that protected the three of them, just enough to Work through it. Then he reached out, ever so delicately, meaning to brush the stranger with a Knowing. Even if the man felt so delicate a touch, he might consider it no more than it was—a polite inquiry—and let it pass unnoticed.

Breathing deeply in concentration, Damien felt the Working build, spanning the room between them. It gave order to the fae along its path, like a magnet would organize iron filings. Soon a single shining filament of purpose stretched from Damien’s table to the one where the stranger now sat—fine as spider’s silk, luminous as crystal—allowing him to extend his senses into the stranger’s personal space and touch the man’s essence with his own.

And he encountered a surface like polished glass. Smooth—reflective—impenetrable. His Knowing brushed up against it; there was a brief moment when it seemed he was touching not glass, but ice; and then it was gone, all contact between them broken. His Working had simply vanished—the thread was dissolved, into thin air—as though it had never been. As though he had never even tried.

A Shielding, he thought. He was awed by its execution. An adept’s work, without question. And even by that standard, magnificently done. There was no doubting the man’s power—or his skill in applying it.

Slowly, calmly, in response to Damien’s fleeting touch, the stranger turned toward him. Across the length of the common room their eyes met. The man’s clear, steady gaze was more informative than any Working could have been—and much more discerning. Damien felt his own space invaded, the chill touch of a strange mind sorting out who and what he was—and then as quickly it was gone, and the space between them was impenetrable once more.

A faint smile crossed the stranger’s face. Then, clearly satisfied with whatever information he had garnered, he turned away again. A stemmed goblet had been placed before him and he sipped from it, delicately, while he watched the fire dance in its stone enclosure. Utterly calm, he seemed unconcerned with Damien’s presence, or with the Working that had so briefly disturbed his peace. Or with anyone else in the room, for that matter.

“Damned sure of himself,” Senzei muttered.

Damien noticed the edge in the man’s voice, felt it echo in his own thoughts. How much of our reaction is jealousy? he wondered. How can a man experience that kind of power and not want to control it?

And especially Senzei, he reminded himself. Ciani had told him that. The man hungered for Sight like a starving man hungered for food; what did it mean to him, to see that kind of power displayed so openly?

“You think he’s an adept,” Ciani breathed.

Damien looked at her. Measured his words. “It’s possible,” he said at last.

She leaned forward slightly; her eyes were gleaming. “You think he could help us?”

For some reason, he was chilled by the mere thought. “That would be very dangerous. We know nothing about him. Nothing. Even if he would be willing to join us, can we afford to take on a total unknown?” Who arrived at just the right moment, he added silently. Too right. I don’t trust it.

He suddenly looked back at the man, and wondered how much of his response was rational, and how much of it was the result of growing tension over other matters. Like having to sit here in this overfortified inn while the creatures they sought after were probably getting farther and farther away with each passing minute. Like his problems with the boy, the unaccustomed taste of a failure. With an adept’s power to back him . . .

No. Unthinkable. The risk simply wasn’t worth it.

“To involve a stranger in our personal business—knowing absolutely nothing of his power or his purpose—that would be incredibly dangerous. How could we risk it?”

“The problem is our ignorance?”

He looked at her sharply; there was a note in her voice he couldn’t quite read. “That’s a good part of it, yes.”

She hesitated only an instant, then pushed her chair back and stood.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Knowing,” she said tightly. “In the old Earth sense.” And she smiled, albeit nervously, for the first time since leaving Jaggonath. “Someone has to do it, don’t you think?”

And she was gone. Before Damien could protest. Before Senzei, reaching out, could stop her. The two men watched, aghast, as she wended her way across the dimly lit room. As she waited for the stranger’s attention to fix on her, and then began to speak to him. After a few seemingly pleasant words, he offered her a seat at his table. She took it.

“Damn her,” Damien muttered.

“And women in general,” Senzei growled.

“That, too.”

The stranger called a waitress over. It was the same girl who had served Damien and Senzei, but now her blouse was tucked down tightly into her belt, outlining breasts that she was clearly proud to display to him. Whatever charisma the stranger possessed, it seemed to work tenfold on women. For some reason, that was more irritating than all the rest combined.

“You think she’s safe?” Damien whispered.

Senzei considered. And nodded, slowly. “I think maybe she’s in her element.”

He looked at Senzei, surprised.

“Watch her,” the sorcerer whispered. There was a kind of love in his voice that Damien had never heard him express before. For the first time he sensed the true depth of their friendship—and he reflected sadly upon the fact that he had never heard such a note in Senzei’s voice when he spoke of his fiancée.

She must have realized that. And it must have hurt like hell.

Ciani was indeed in her element—tense, wary, but more alive than she had been in days. And why not? Whatever it was that had caused her to devote her life to the acquisition of knowledge, that instinct was still intact and thriving. They had taken the facts from her mind, but they couldn’t change what she was.

Seeing that the stranger was responding well to her advances—and that she herself was slowly becoming more comfortable with him—Damien relaxed. Or rather, tried to. But there was another kind of tension within him, and that was growing. Not concern for her, exactly. Rather, more like . . .

Jealousy. Simple-minded, ego-centered, masculine jealousy. Well, grow up, Damien. You don’t own her. And just because he has a pretty face and some new stories to tell doesn’t mean that he does, either.

“They’re coming,” Senzei whispered.

He must have been watching them on other levels, because it was several minutes before Ciani and the stranger actually got up. He first, rising effortlessly, then stepping behind her chair to help pull it out for her. The custom of another time, another culture. When she turned in their direction, she no longer seemed afraid; her eyes were sparkling with newfound animation. Not for the man, Damien reminded himself. For the mystery that he represents.

As if that made it any easier.

If the stranger bore them any ill will for their previous invasion of his privacy, he didn’t show it. He bowed politely as Ciani introduced them but offered no hand for them to clasp. The social patterns of a bygone age—or a paranoid adept. Damien suspected the latter.

“This is Gerald Tarrant,” Ciani announced. “Originally from Aramanth, more recently from Sheva.” Damien couldn’t identify the place name exactly, but like all cities near the Forbidden Forest it had been named for an Earth-god of death or destruction. He was from the north, then. That was ominous. Generally anyone with the Sight steered clear of that region—for good reason. The Forest had a history of corrupting anyone who could respond to it.

“Please join us,” Senzei said, and Damien nodded.

The newcomer pulled up chairs for the two of them, helped Ciani into hers before sitting down himself. “I was hardly expecting company,” he said pleasantly. “Arriving at such an hour, one often receives a less than enthusiastic welcome.”

“What brings you to Briand?” Damien asked shortly.

The pale eyes sparkled—and for a moment, just a moment, they seemed to be reaching into Damien’s soul, weighing it. “Sport,” he said at last. With a half-smile that said he knew just how uninformative that was. “Call it pursuit of a hobby.” He offered no more on that subject, and his manner didn’t invite continued questioning. “Yourselves?”

“Business. In Kale. Family shipping, for Fray—and for us, a chance to get away from town. An excuse to travel.”

The stranger nodded; Damien had the disquieting feeling that he knew just how much wasn’t being said. “It’s dangerous traveling at night,” he challenged the man. “Especially in this region.”

The stranger nodded. “Would that all our pursuits could be completed in neat little packets of time during the day, and we need never stir between dusk and dawn.” He sipped from the goblet in his hand. “But if that were the case, Ernan history would be quite a different thing than it is, don’t you think?”

“You’re lucky they let you in.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “That was fortunate.”

And so on. Damien designed questions that should give him insight into some facet of the man’s existence—and he parried them all, without missing a beat. He seemed to enjoy fencing words with them, and would sometimes cast out tidbits of knowledge to draw them in—only to turn them aside with a quick response or a well-planned ambiguity, so that they came away knowing no more of the man than exactly what he meant them to know. Which was next to nothing.

Damien wondered if he had played the same game with Ciani. Was it possible to play that kind of game with Ciani?

At last the newcomer leaned back in his chair, as if signaling the end of that phase of their relationship. He set the goblet down before him; red liquid glinted within, reflecting the lamplight.

“The lady tells me you’re working on a Healing.”

Startled, he looked at Ciani—but her eyes were fixed on the stranger. He weighed his alternatives quickly and decided at last that there was no better way to test the man than to tell him the truth.

“The Keeper’s son,” he said quietly. Watching the man for any kind of reaction. “He’s comatose. I tried to help.”

He bowed his head gracefully. “I’m sorry.” Which might have meant anything. Sorry for the illness. Sorry about your desire to help. Sorry about your failure. “May I be of service?”

“You Heal?” Damien said suspiciously.

The stranger smiled, as if at some private joke. “Not for some time. My own specialty is in analysis. Perhaps that might be of use to you?”

“It might,” he said guardedly. He looked across the room, couldn’t locate the boy’s mother. She must have gone back to his bedside. When a waitress looked in his direction he waved her over, and asked her to please locate the dae-keeper for them. He had news that might interest her.

“She’s wary of strangers,” he warned. “She trusted me because of my calling. My Church. Whether she’ll want you near the boy is another thing.”

“Ah.” The stranger considered that for a moment. Then he reached into the neck of his tunic and drew out a thin disk on a chain. Fine workmanship, a delicate etching on pure gold: the Earth.

And he smiled; the expression was almost pleasant. “Let us see if I can’t convince her to accept my services. Shall we?”

The boy’s room seemed even more quiet after the relative noisiness of the common room. Oppressively so. Damien found it claustrophobic, in a way it hadn’t been before. Or was that his territorial instinct, responding to a newcomer’s intrusion?

Childish, Vryce. Get over it.

It was just the three of them in the small room. The boy’s mother had agreed to let the newcomer look at her child—fearful, apprehensive, but she had agreed—but she drew the line at admitting the pagan multitudes. Just as well. Damien welcomed a chance to assess the man, without Ciani’s presence to distract him.

Gerald Tarrant walked to the far side of the bed and gazed down at the child. With a start, Damien realized that the man’s skin was hardly darker than that of the boy; flesh sans melanin. It suited him so well that Damien hadn’t noticed it before, but now, contrasted against the boy’s sickly pallor . . . the coloring was ominous. And here it was soon after summer, too. Damien considered all the reasons a seemingly healthy man might not have a tan. A few of them—very few—were innocent. Most were not.

Be fair. Senzei’s pale. Some men have business that binds them to the night.

Yes . . . and some of that business is highly suspect.

Slowly, the stranger sat on the edge of bed. He studied the boy in silence for a moment, then made a cursory inspection of obvious signs: lifting the eyelids to study the pupils, pressing a long index finger against the boy’s upper neck to take his pulse, even studying the fingernails. It was hard to tell when he was simply looking and when he was Knowing as well; he was like Ciani in that he needed no words or gestures to trigger a Working, only the sheer force of his will. An adept without question, then.

As if that was in doubt.

Damien looked at the boy’s mother, and his heart wrenched in sympathy. Because he had vouched for the stranger, she had allowed him to approach her son. But Gerald Tarrant wasn’t a priest, and it was clear that his presence here made her very nervous. She twisted her hands in her apron, trying not to protest. Glanced at Damien, her eyes begging for reassurance. He wished he had it to give to her.

He looked down at the boy again—and froze, when he saw the stranger’s knife pressed against the youth’s inner arm. A thin line of red welled up in its wake: dark crimson, thick and wet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

The stranger didn’t acknowledge him in any way. Folding his knife, he tucked it carefully back into his belt. The boy’s mother moaned softly and swayed; Damien wondered if she was going to faint. He was torn between wanting to go to her and desperately wanting to stop this lunacy. What purpose could it possibly serve, to cut the boy open like that? But he stood where he was, chilled by a terrible, morbid fascination. As he watched, the stranger touched one slender finger to the wound, collecting a drop of blood. He brought it to his lips and breathed in its bouquet; then, apparently satisfied with it, he touched the crimson droplet to his tongue. And tasted it. And stiffened.

He looked at the woman. His expression was dark.

“You didn’t tell me he was an addict.”

The color drained suddenly from her face, as if someone had opened a tap beneath her feet and all her blood had poured out. “He isn’t,” she whispered. “That is, I didn’t . . .”

“What is it?” Damien asked hoarsely.

“Blackout.” The cut he had made was still oozing blood; a thin line of crimson dribbled down the boy’s wrist, onto the quilt. “And not all legal, was it?”

She was shaking. “How can you know that?”

“Simple logic. This boy had quite an addiction. If he’d fed it with legals, that would have meant repeated trips into Jaggonath . . . and you would have known. On the other hand, with all the travelers that you have passing through here . . .” He shrugged suggestively. “It guaranteed his secrecy, but at a high cost. He knew the risk, and accepted it. I suspect that was part of the thrill.”

“You can’t say that!”

His eyes narrowed—just that, and no more. But no more was necessary. She took a step backward and turned away rather than meet his gaze.

“Is that it, then?” Her voice was a whisper. Her hands were trembling. “Just . . . drugs?”

He turned back to study the boy. After he was silent for a moment, Damien conjured his own Sight into existence—and watched as the shield he had fought with for so many hours was peeled back, layer by layer. Parting, like the petals of a flower coming into bloom. He felt a sudden surge of jealousy, had to fight to keep concentrating.

Why does it have to come so damned easily to him!

Beyond the barrier was . . . darkness. Emptiness. A blackness so absolute that the cold of it chilled Damien’s thoughts. He dared not reach out to read its source, not when a stranger was in control—but even so he could tell that something was wrong, very wrong. Something that went far beyond mere addiction, or the self-destructive fantasies of a depressed adolescent. Something that hinted at outside interference. At a malignance far greater than anything this poor boy might have conjured.

“Leave us,” Tarrant ordered. He looked up at the woman. She began to protest—and then choked back on the words, and bowed to the force of the man’s will. Tears were pouring silently down her cheeks as she turned and left the room, and Damien longed to comfort her. But he was damned if he was going to leave the boy alone with this stranger, even for a minute.

When the door had shut securely behind the woman, Gerald Tarrant reached out to touch the boy, one slender finger resting against the skin of his forehead. Slowly, layer by layer, the barrier that he had parted restored itself. Slowly the gaping blackness that was inside the boy became less and less visible, until even Damien’s strongest Knowing could no longer make it out. Deep blue lines began to radiate from the adept’s fingertip, like blood that had been starved of oxygen. Damien watched as they began to penetrate the boy’s skin, delicate threads of azure ice that chilled the capillaries as they entered the boy’s bloodstream—

And then he reached out and grabbed the man’s arm—the flesh was cold, and seemed to drain the warmth from his hand where there was contact—and he pulled him away from the boy as violently as he could. And hissed in fury, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Tarrant’s eyes fixed on him—infinitely calm, infinitely cold. “Killing him,” he said quietly. “Gradually, of course. It won’t culminate until morning. The family will consider it . . . natural. Medics will ascribe it to the contamination found in black market drugs. And the matter will end there. Isn’t that desirable?”

“You have no right!”

“This boy’s body serves no purpose,” he said quietly. “They can ship it from city to city for months, pour bottles of sugar and tonic and what have you into its bloodstream to keep it alive for years . . . but what’s the point? There’s nothing left here that’s worth maintaining.” His pale gray eyes sparkled coldly. “Isn’t it kinder to the living to remove such a hindrance, rather than let it drain them of money and energy until they have nothing left worth living for?”

He felt like he was being tested somehow, without knowing either the parameters of the test or its purpose. “You’re saying he can’t recover.”

“I’m saying there’s nothing left to recover. The soul is still there, hanging on by a thread. But the mechanism that would allow it to reconnect has been removed, priest. Devoured, if you will.”

“You mean . . . his brain?”

“I mean his memory. The core of his identity. Gone. He let the drugs weaken his link to this body . . . and something moved in while he was absent. Moved in, and cleaned house.” The gray eyes were fixed on him, weighing his reaction. “There is no hope for him, priest—because he, as such, no longer exists. That,” and he indicated the body, “is an empty shell. Would you still call it murder, knowing that, if I caused it to expire?”

Memory, Damien thought. Identity. God in Heaven . . .

He reached for a chair—or anything that would support him—and at last lowered himself onto the corner of a trunk.

Memory. Devoured. Here, in our very path.

He thought of those things getting into the dae. Feasting on the boy, as they had once feasted on Ciani. Only this time they’d had no need for vengeance, no vested interest in prolonging their victim’s suffering. They’d eaten all there was to eat, and left no more than an empty shell behind . . .

Does that mean they’re right ahead of us, traveling the same route? Do they know we’re coming? Are they letting us know it? Challenging us, perhaps? Merciful God, each possibility is worse than the last . . .

Then he looked up into the stranger’s eyes and read the truth behind his calm.

“You’ve run into something like this before,” he challenged.

There was a silence. A long one. The cold, pale eyes were impossible to read.

“Say that I’m hunting something,” Gerald Tarrant said at last. “Say that this is its mark, its trail. Its spoor.” He looked at the boy’s body, and said quietly, “What about you, priest?”

Hunting. The very things we’re after. Is that the mark of an ally—or a trap? There’s too much coincidence here. Be careful.

“They killed a friend,” he said quietly.

He bowed. “My condolences.”

He tried to think. Tried to factor this new variable into all his equations. But it was happening too fast; he needed time to consider. He needed to talk to Senzei and Ciani. If the creatures they were trying to kill were only one day ahead of them, on the same road they meant to travel . . . he shook his head, trying to weigh all the options. Maybe they should speed up, not cower in the daes at night. Or change their route, try to circle around and get ahead. Or else maybe the creatures meant them to do one of those things, had set up this little tragedy to throw off any possible pursuit. To pressure their pursuers to choose a lesser road, one with fewer protections . . .

Too many plots and counterplots. Too many variables. He smelled danger, but couldn’t tell just where the odor was coming from.

“Which way are you headed?” he asked.

Tarrant hesitated, suddenly wary. It occurred to Damien for the first time that he, also, was loath to trust a stranger. That was a sobering concept.

“Wherever the trail leads,” he said at last. “North, for the moment. But who can say where it will turn tomorrow?”

As anxious as I am not to give anything away. For similar reasons?

“You’ll be here till morning?”

The stranger laughed softly. “The trail I follow is only visible at night, priest—and so that must define my hours. I stop at the daes when I can, for a taste of real food and the sound of human voices. When they let me in. But already I’ve been here too long. The spoor—” and he indicated the boy’s body, “—is already growing cold. The hunter must move on. Now, if you will permit me . . .”

He moved toward the boy once more. Damien had to force himself to be still as those delicate fingers settled once more on the colorless skin. Like flies. Leeches. The chill blue fae began to build once more, a slender web-work of death that wove itself about the boy’s skin. He had to fight himself not to interfere.

“You could tell her,” he said quickly, “the truth.”

“His mother?” He looked up at Damien, and one corner of his mouth twisted slightly. In amusement? “He died in terror. Do you want her to know that?” Then he focused his attention back on the boy, on the delicate veil of death taking form beneath his fingertips. “You do your job, priest. I’ll take care of mine. Unless you’d rather do this yourself.”

“I don’t kill innocents,” he said coldly.

The death-fae halted in its progress. Gerald Tarrant looked up at him.

“There are no innocents,” he said quietly.

They let the man out into the night, as carefully as they had previously let him in. Mes Kanadee guarded the door until it was safely locked behind him, and Damien—who had volunteered to help—added a Protecting to reestablish the fae-seals.

He felt both bitter and relieved that the man was leaving them. And envious, in equal measure. It was terrifying to be out there alone at night, especially in an area as actively malignant as this. But it was also exhilarating. For a man who knew how to take care of himself—as Gerald Tarrant clearly did—it was the ultimate challenge.

He watched as the last of the bolts was thrown, then joined his companions at the fireside. Night had thinned the ranks of travelers that previously had filled the common room; save for one woman asleep by the fire, and a middle-aged couple nursing their drinks at a far table, the small company was alone.

Senzei looked up at him, then back to the fire. “Where’s he headed?”

“North.”

“Our route?”

“Most likely.”

“Did you learn his business?”

He stared into the fire. Tried to get the man’s image out of his mind. “I learned a little of his nature,” he answered. “That’s enough.” He wished he could rid himself of the chill that had entered his soul, the images that refused to leave him. Of a gaping black hole where a boy’s soul used to be. Of the cold blue worms that were even now sucking out his life, to give him a “natural” death. Of pale gray eyes, and the challenge that had been in them . . .

Despite the heat of the fire, he shivered. “I’ll tell you about it later. In the morning. Let me sort it out in my own mind first, so it makes some kind of sense when I tell it.”

“He’s an adept,” Ciani said. Her tone was a plea.

He put an arm around her and squeezed gently. But the tension in her body refused to ease; there was a barrier between them now, a subtle but pervasive blockage that had begun when her assailants devoured so many of the memories they shared. But now it seemed even stronger—colder, somehow. As if the stranger’s presence had caused it to grow. He had assumed that time would give them back what they had lost; now, suddenly, he was no longer certain.

“I’ve seen power like that before,” he told her. Trying to explain the coldness that was inside him, the nameless chill that rose up whenever he thought of allying with that man. “But I’ve never seen it exercised so coldbloodedly.”

And there are so many little things that are wrong, with him. Like the Earth medallion. His supposed allegiance to a Church that rejects his kind. No adept has made peace with my faith since the Prophet died.

“We’re better off without him,” he told her. Working the fae into his words. Trying to make himself sound convincing.

He wished he truly believed it himself.

16

Slowly, carefully, the xandu came down out of the mountains. Flexible feet treading silently on soft earth, picking a way between the sharp, treacherous boulders on one hand and the tangle of fallen branches on the other. Dead, all of it was dead. Autumn might be coming to the lowlands, but winter had already crowned the Worldsend peaks in white—and mile by mile, inch by inch, the carpet of life on which the xandu and his kind depended was being smothered by winter’s cold.

It lifted its head and sniffed the wind, seeking some promise of change. How much farther could it go on, this utter desolation? The xandu’s instincts insisted that there would be food to the west, thick green grasses not yet made brittle by winter’s ice, curling leaves turned rust and amber by autumn’s breath, but not yet fallen. Not yet dry. Not yet dead as this place was dead—as all of its usual grazing lands were dead, rocky lands carpeted in dried-out, useless husks of what once might have served for food.

It was a young animal, not yet experienced in the harsh rhythm of the seasons. Not yet aware, on all the levels that a xandu might become aware. Fae-tides rippled about its feet, but they were as meaningless to it as the stars which rose in the daytime, which were not required for light. It ignored them. Its only concern now, beyond that of safety, was food—and it sent that need out, echoing across the foothills of the Worldsend and into the lowlands, without ever knowing that it did so.

And it was answered. Not with a scent, exactly. Not with anything the xandu could have defined, or anything it knew how to respond to. Call it . . . a certainty. A sense of direction, and definition. It was hungry, and there was food, and if it traveled in a certain direction, at a certain pace, the twin paths of need and supply would converge. It knew this as it knew the rhythms of its own body, the taste of highgrass just coming into bloom, the smell of winter. Without doubt. Without words.

It began to gallop. Pounding feet noisy on the packed earth, it kept alert for predators. But there were few beasts who would hunt a young, healthy xandu. Its long, gleaming horns might have been intended for sexual combat, but they were just as effective in goring an arrogant predator.

It traveled for many hours. The sun set in the western sky, and soon after was followed by that curtain of stars which was its closest rival in light. Evening fell darkly across the lowlands. The xandu was picking up new scents now, strange scents, of plants and animals native to this foreign terrain. Still it traveled. There were things growing here that might have served it for food, but food was no longer its primary concern.

And then, on the horizon, it saw something. Merely an amorphous shape at first, which slowly became more defined as the xandu galloped closer. A strange animal, that stood back on its hind legs as though raised up in sexual display. The xandu slowed to a trot, then to a walk. There was a feeling of Tightness about the creature, of completeness, such that the xandu didn’t think to fear. It had sought food, and here was food. It would soon need warmth, and here was a creature who commanded fire. It would ache with loneliness . . . and here, in this creature, was a companion for its winter, who would brave the ravages of the ice-time by its side, and then release it to seek out its own kind when the spring came again.

Wordlessly, effortlessly, it absorbed the stranger’s need. Inside its body, unseen, molecules shifted their allegiance from one chemical pattern to another; instincts which had been merely dormant before this moment quickened with new life, and others—which had previously ruled its actions—subsided into half-sleep. And it knew, without understanding how, that the strange creature had also changed. And that the change was natural, and correct.

Then the stranger reached into its skin—a false skin, the xandu observed, which was wrapped around its own—and brought out food, which it gave to the xandu. And then more, and yet more, until the xandu’s hunger was sated. It offered water, too, poured into its cupped hands, and the xandu drank.

Then the creature swung itself up onto the xandu’s back; and that, too, was correct, and exactly as it should be. So much so that it suddenly seemed strange to the xandu that it had never borne such a creature before.

They turned north, and—at a vigorous gallop—began to close the distance between where they were and where they needed to be.

17

He couldn’t do it.

Senzei sat alone in the center of a clearing, and tried to quiet his mind. Ever since they had encountered that man at the dae his nerves had been jangling like a hundred wards all set off at once, making it hard to concentrate. Now, every time he tried to take hold of the fae and commit himself to Working it, the memory of Gerald Tarrant got in the way.

It bothered him. It wouldn’t stop bothering him. He felt like the man had been toying with them somehow, without knowing how or why.

You can’t let it get to you. Not this much. We have to know where Ciani’s assailants have gone and what they intend . . . and if you can’t get your act together to Know that, you might as well have stayed home. Which thought brought its own special pain. It could be simply that the man had awakened a storm of conflicting emotions within him: hunger and anger and jealousy combined, all in response to his obvious power. Or it could be something far more ominous than that: it could be that the stranger had established a channel between them, a subtle link between himself and the three travelers that hinted at darker intentions. But toward what end?

Only one way to find out, he thought grimly.

He hadn’t shared these misgivings with his companions. Not yet. Damien had been sullen all morning, and Senzei suspected that something Tarrant did when they were alone together was the cause. No reason to add to it. And Ciani . . . his chest tightened with grief at the mere thought of her. She would just hurt—silently, but he would see it in her eyes—and he would feel guilty for feeling such things, for feeling anything at all. While all the time he would want to scream at her, You had it, you had it all and you lost it, how could you let it go! As if somehow it had been her fault, as if she could have stopped it from happening.

Despite the relative warmth of the morning, he shivered. We’re none of us as rational as we’d like to be. Gods keep that from dividing us.

A sudden rustling disturbed the brush behind him; he twisted around to see its cause, saw Ciani standing at the edge of the clearing.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said quickly. “Damien said to see if you’d be ready to move soon.”

So we can make the next dae by sunset, he finished silently. And lock ourselves away in safety one more time.

The answer’s here, in the night. Tarrant knew that.

“Come here,” he said gently, and he patted the ground beside him.

She hesitated, then entered the clearing and sat. “I don’t want to disturb you,” she said.

“I was going to Work. You can Share it, if you’d like.”

In her eyes: Elation. Fear. Hunger. He fought the instinct to turn away, knowing how much that would hurt her.

My gods. Did I look like that to her? Has fate done no more than reverse our roles?

He took her hand in his, weaving their fingers together. Holding her tightly, palm to palm, until it was possible to feel the pounding of her pulse against his flesh, to imagine that their two bloodstreams had somehow become linked together—and through that linkage, all the skills that made a Working possible.

All right, you bastard. Obviously I’m not going to be able to Work on anything else until I settle with you in my mind. So let’s get a good look at just where you are, and what you’re up to.

He sent his will questing along the fae-currents, noting the distinct northward pull that seemed to affect everything in this region. That would be the Forest, exerting its malevolent influence. Soon it would be difficult to Work in any other direction. How could an adept bear to live in such a place, where every thought was dragged toward that single point? Didn’t Tarrant claim to come from somewhere north of here?

Slowly, the landscape about them began to take shape before his special senses. He clasped Ciani’s hand tightly, Sharing the vision with her. The ground began to glow, with a colorless light. Currents of earth-fae swirled like fog about their knees, responding to some unseen pattern deep in the earth beneath them. He drew back—and upward—willing his viewpoint to expand and take in the surrounding terrain. Now he could see the clearing from above, with their two small bodies sitting side by side. Higher. The trees gave way to brush, to open ground. To a road, dusted with discolored leaves. He followed it southward, noting the pull of the current against him; soon it would be all but impossible to Work against its flow. Slowly, the vision he sought unfolded before Him. There was the dae, in all its protective glory. There was the stockade gate, with a spot of light marking each active fae-signature, every working ward. And there were the footsteps leading to the road, a fading remnant of each traveler’s identity that clung to the earth they had walked on, leaving a record that the faewise were able to read.

It was no great trial to determine which marks were Gerald Tarrant’s; they stood out from among the others like a livid black spot on the face of the sun—a trail so dark that it seemed to vibrate, sucking the sunlight into its substance. The other footprints seemed weaker by the light of day, but his had gained in substance. As though each were a raw scar upon the earth, which the sun’s rays worried at.

Not pretty, he thought grimly. Not pretty at all.

He followed the trail several yards, tracking the man’s progress toward the road. And then the trail ended. Suddenly. Not tapering out, as a line of true footsteps might. Nor marked with the hard light of a Working, to indicate that the man had deliberately hidden his trail. It simply . . . wasn’t there. At all.

Senzei sank himself deeper into concentration, straining to summon all the Sight that was available to him. The image of the dae sharpened. Tarrant’s trail came into clear, almost painful focus . . . and still it disappeared, just as suddenly and in the same spot as before. It was as if the man had ceased to exist beyond that point.

He withdrew from the dae’s confines, taking Ciani with him. And moved his viewpoint to high above, trying to gain some perspective.

“What if he mounted?” Ciani whispered.

The concept was so utterly naive, so ignorant of the most basic laws of the fae, that Senzei nearly wept for hearing it from her. His concentration, and therefore the Vision, wavered. “This isn’t like a physical trail. You don’t lose it when his feet are off the ground. It’s the result of his presence affecting the currents . . . and that shouldn’t disappear, just because he’s sitting on a horse. The trail might look different, but it should still be there.”

“What if he . . .“ She hesitated. “Became something else?”

Startled, he looked at her. The vision shattered into a thousand bits, like breaking glass. He let it go.

“That’s not possible,” he whispered.

“Why not?”

He drew in a deep breath and tried to gather his thoughts. Tried to banish the feeling that somehow, somewhere, they were being Watched. “Shapechanging is . . . technically feasible, I suppose. And there are legends. But no one I ever knew could manage it, or had ever seen it done.” He met her eyes. “You couldn’t do it,” he said. Gently. “I asked you why. You said it would require total submission to the fae. The kind of submission that the human mind can’t accept. Maybe native sorcerers could manage it, you said. If there ever were any native sorcerers.”

She said it quietly. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Cee, shapechanging—”

“I didn’t mean shapechanging.”

He stared at her for a long minute, trying to comprehend. “What, then? What is it?”

“What if he isn’t human?” she pressed. “What if that was just a . . . a guise? A mask? What if once he was outside the dae, out of sight of the guards . . . he didn’t need it any more?”

He stared at her, speechless.

“Isn’t it possible? I don’t remember . . .”

“It’s possible,” he finally managed. “But there were wards up all over the place! Nothing that wasn’t human should have been able to get within yards of it. Least of all in a false body.”

“Something got in to hurt that boy,” she pointed out. “Something that the wards were supposed to be guarding against.”

He wanted to say to her, Your ward was up there, too, right over the front door. Are you telling me something got past that? Not only walked right in under it, but maintained a false human body all the time it was there?

But he was remembering something she had once told him. Remembering it as though she were saying it now, her voice low and couched in a tone of warning.

Every Warding has its weak spot. Every one, without exception. Sometimes you have to search hard to find it, but it’s there, in all of them. Which means that the wards only protect us as well as they do because so few demons are capable of working an analysis . . .

My speciality is in analysis, Tarrant had said.

Senzei squeezed her hand tightly. Hoped that she couldn’t feel his fear. The air seemed suddenly warm, too warm; he loosened his collar, felt his hand shaking.

Don’t let it get to you. You can’t let it get to you. Her strength depends on yours. Don’t lose it, Senzei.

“Come on,” he said. He managed to stand. “Let’s get back to Damien.” He helped her to her feet. “I think he should know about this.”

Damien listened to what they had to say—silently, patiently, without interrupting even to question them further—and then answered simply, “I had the same problem. Which just means we won’t be able to track them by Working. Otherwise our plans stay the same.”

“Damien,” Senzei protested. “I don’t think you understand—”

“I do,” he said stiffly. Something in his manner—the set of his shoulders, the tone of his voice—bespoke a terrible tension. A struggle inside him that was only now breaking through to the surface. “I understand more than you’re even aware of.”

“If those things are right ahead of us—”

“Yes. That sound reasonable, doesn’t it? Only, how do we know that?” His hands had balled into angry fists by his sides; he looked about himself, as if searching for something to hit. “I’ll tell you how. Twenty-five words or less. We know it because Gerald Tarrant told us. That’s how we know.” He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. Fighting for control over the rage that seemed ready to consume him. “I’ve gone over it in my mind again and again since we left the dae this morning. And each time it comes to the same thing. I trusted his word. Not willingly—not even knowingly—but like an animal trusts its trainer. Like a laboratory rat trusts the men who feed it when it finally runs the way they want it to. Gerald Tarrant said that something had devoured the boy’s memory, and I accepted it. God knows, I had good reason not to test him then. If I’d let myself be drawn into his Working, there’s no telling what might have happened. So I didn’t. You understand what that means? I didn’t Know for myself. I took his word for it that what he said was the truth, when I should have Seen for myself—”

“You couldn’t have known,” Senzei said hurriedly. “Such power—”

“Damn the power!” His eyes blazed with fury—at Gerald Tarrant, at himself. “Don’t you understand? If he wasn’t telling the truth—if the boy’s memory hadn’t been taken—then what did attack him? What left him wounded like that, and then set up a Shielding so perfect that no one but Mer Tarrant could get through it? Ask yourself that!”

He took a deep breath. Then another. Trying to calm himself. It didn’t work. “I should have confirmed it,” he muttered. “If not then, later. I should have checked.”

Senzei hesitated—and then reached out and put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. Emotional support, without the pressure of a Working; after a moment Damien nodded, acknowledging the gesture.

“We can go back,” Senzei said gently. “If you need to Know—”

“We can’t go back. One, because we have a mission to complete—and the longer we delay here, the harder it will get. Two, because . . . because . . .”

He turned away. Slipping out from under Senzei’s grasp so that he stood alone. His shoulders trembled.

“The boy is dead,” he said at last. “Tarrant killed him. You understand? He called it a mercy killing. Maybe it was. But damned convenient, don’t you think?

“God,” he whispered; his voice was shaking. “What have I been witness to?”

“What do you want to do?” Senzei asked quietly.

He turned back to face them; his eyes were red. “We go to Kale,” he told them. “Directly to Kale. If Tarrant was right and those things did attack the boy, then they’re nearly two days ahead of us; we won’t pass them without intending to. If he was wrong . . . then they could be anywhere. Behind us, ahead of us, even back in the rakhlands by now. I couldn’t get a fix on them any more than you could, Zen. He’s right in that; such a Working has to be done at night. But in Kale. In the relative safety of a city’s confines. Not out here . . . where camping outside the daes means setting ourselves up for God knows what.”

“You think he’s allied with them?” Ciani asked anxiously.

“I don’t know what he is—and I don’t want to know. He’s setting up some kind of game, maybe just for his amusement, maybe for some darker purpose. I say we don’t play by his rules. That means we go straight to Kale, like we planned. No detours, no delays, and above all else no forays out into the night. We tell the daes to keep their doors shut; if he wants the night that badly, let him stay in it. Agreed?”

“And if he really is hunting them?” Senzei asked.

“In that case,” he muttered, “more power to him. I hope he makes his kill.”

He looked out over the road ahead—northward, toward the Forest—and added, “May they take him with them, when he does.”

18

Tobi Zendel was securing the last of his nets when dusk fell, and because his attention was wholly fixed on the task before him he failed to notice the figure as it approached him, and did not hear it coming until the planks of the small pier finally creaked in warning.

“What the-” He turned about to see what had come up behind him; the anatomically complex profanity he had been about to spout forth withered on his lips, unvoiced. “What the hell?” he said softly—a socially acceptable substitute.

The figure that stood on the pier before him was that of a woman, oddly dressed. She was about his height, which was not tall; slender, and delicately boned; precisely made, with small, high breasts—although the latter were somewhat obscured by her clothing, so it was hard for him to judge their exact appeal. She was clothed in layers of tight cloth, which might have been actual garments but had more the appearance of wrappings. Gloves hid her hands, and a scarf which was tightly wrapped about her head and neck hid all the rest of her from view, except for her face. That was delicately sculpted, delicately colored—a clear golden brown that perfectly matched her garments—and oddly soft, as though he were viewing it through frosted glass.

“I’m sorry, Mes.” He breathed the words, as though somehow her presence demanded silence. “I didn’t see you coming, was all. Can I . . . can I help you?”

She looked out across the Serpent, as if searching for something. After a few seconds her gaze fixed on a distant point, and she extended her arm toward it. A question; a command.

He looked over his shoulder, toward where she was pointing. And laughed, somewhat nervously. “Morgot Lady, that’s out.” The fingers of her glove were split, he noticed; thin curving claws, like those of a cat, gleamed in the slits. “That’s upstraits, crosscurrent . . . and bad luck, besides. You want that crossing, ferry over to Kale. They’ll take you, sure enough—if the price is right.”

She reached into a fold of fabric at her hip, brought out a small purse.

“Lady, it isn’t money. I value my neck. You understand? That’s a rough crossing. And I’m a coward.”

Slowly, she lowered her arm. And waited. He was about to speak again when he saw something move, up by the start of the pier. Not a person, this time. A . . . a . . .

Gods of Earth n’ Erna. A xandu?

It was horse-sized, and roughly horse-shaped, but there the similarity ended. Thick fur gleamed along its limbs, tufting thickly about its five-toed feet. It was pearl-gray, for the most part, but a mane of thick white hair adorned its chest and shoulders, and small white tufts marked the points of its ears. Its head was slender and pointed, its large eyes positioned in a manner that could have served it as predator or prey. And its horns . . . he had to fight not to reach out and touch them, not to put his hands on their cool, rainbow length and know for a fact that, yes, they were real. The creature was real. A true xandu, which mankind thought had been Worked into extinction, so many years ago . . .

He looked at the woman—dark, her eyes were so dark, you could see neither iris nor white in them, only pupil—and said, in a voice that shook slightly, “You’ll trade him? I’ll take you, for that. Take you over. There’ll be mounts there, you understand? You can buy a mount on Morgot. I mean, you know where to get a xandu, right? So it’s not like I’d be taking anything you couldn’t replace.” He was fighting to speak coherently, while greed and wonder conspired within to rob him of speech. “I mean . . . I’d take the risk, for that.”

She looked at him—and at the xandu—and then back at him. Assessing. After a moment, she moved her head slightly. He thought it was a nod.

“We can go right now if you want.” He started to prepare to cast off, loosening the ropes he had only so recently tied. “It’s pretty safe, out on the water. Unless you’d rather wait for sunlight—”

Silently she stepped to the edge of the pier, her soft leather boots making no sound. For a moment he was close enough to see her face in detail—and it seemed that the golden surface was not skin, but close-lying fur. He shivered. Then she was past him, stepping into the boat. Tobi looked to where the xandu was waiting—and found it already beside him, ready to board. After a moment he stepped aside and let it do so.

Heart pounding—head spinning with thoughts of fame and wealth soon to come—he freed his boat from its mooring posts and set sail for the northern caldera.

19

Five days and nights now, in safety. Five daes that protected them from unknown demon-hunters—and from decisions.

Damien dreamed. At first only misty images, vignettes of dread mingled with bits of memory: a fear-mosaic. Then the dreams began to gain substance, and definition. Night after night he played the same saga out: their journey, their arrival, their final confrontation. And night after night, in every variation, he watched his companions die. And died himself, at the hands of a creature who squeezed the memories from him like pulpy juice from an overripe fruit, then cast the rind aside.

Again and again. With no hope of success. Because what they had wasn’t enough. They lacked the numbers they needed, and the knowledge. They lacked the power.

Evil is what you make of it, the Prophet had written. Bind it to a higher Purpose, and you will have altered its nature. And: We use what tools we must.

Damien wondered if—and how—Gerald Tarrant could be bound.

The port called Kale was as unlike Jaggonath as any place could possibly be. The city’s plan was a veritable maze of narrow, twisting streets, flanked by houses that had been hurriedly built and, for the most part, poorly maintained. Rich and poor were quartered side by side, laborers’ hovels leaning against the thick stone walls of a rich merchant’s estate—barbed iron spikes adorning the top, to discourage the curiosity of strangers—which was flanked in turn by the mildewed shells of workhouses, the miserly confines of tenement flats, the iron-clad husks of massive storage sheds. The streets themselves might once have been paved with stones, and occasionally a flat slab of shallite—deep green, or slate gray, or midnight black—would peek out from beneath the layers of mud and debris and animal droppings which seemed to coat everything in sight. The whole place smelled: of damp, of dung, of decay. But there was commerce here, enough to support thousands. And where trade flourished, humankind inevitably congregated.

They arrived shortly before dusk and wasted the next hour getting themselves thoroughly lost. As the sun sank slowly behind mildewed walls, the maze of streets became stiflingly close. At last Senzei grabbed hold of a passing youngster—a mud-caked ten-year-old who clearly had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with—and offered him a few coins to serve as guide. The boy glanced once at the darkening western sky, as if to point out the danger involved in taking on business at such a late hour—but when no more money was offered he coughed and nodded, and led them through the maze of tangled streets to a somewhat more promising sector.

The breeze shifted, coming in from over the straits: salt air, sharp with promise. Here, the River Stekkis emptied its fresh water and its mud into that precious conduit which connected Erna’s great oceans, dividing the human lands in two. Here, just beyond the whitewaters of Naigra Falls (named for a similar formation on Ancient Earth, or so it was said), goods from along the river were weighed and measured and packaged and assessed and taxed, to be shipped to the hundred—and—some-odd cities that flanked the length of the Serpent Straits. Golden figurines from Lyama rested in sealed crates, next to precious spices from Hade and spring wine from Merentha County. And traveling merchants gathered in lamplit taverns, drinking Kale beer with one hand while they outlined the financial future of nations with the other.

“Let’s get rooms and food,” Damien said. “And secure our things. After that . . . I think we need to take a good look around.”

Five days of travel along the trade roads of the east had come to an end at last—and not a moment too soon, for Damien’s taste. Five endless days spent covering the miles one by one, nights spent cowering in the daes like timid ground-skerrels that went to burrow at dusk, lest something that called the night its home should snatch them up. Five days of hiding from Tarrant, too—although they used other terms for that strategy—by making sure that each dae understood there was something out there desperate to get in, so that none would dare to open their doors. Was that necessary? Was it circumspect? Damien was no longer sure.

“He might not mean us any harm,” Ciani had said.

How could they be certain of that?

Kale. Damien breathed in its rich scents with relief, his heart pounding with newfound exhilaration. The miles before this had been necessary, but tedious. A road devoid of choices. Now . . . they could begin to plan in earnest. Could begin to weave the net that would eventually draw in their enemies, and free Ciani.

Her assailants would have come through here. Might even still be in the city. They might take this opportunity to feed, feeling themselves safe in such a murky, anonymous place. In that case . . . good. The battle could take place here, on human ground, and no one need ever go on to the rakhlands. Oh, the three of them might decide to go anyway, after it was all over—but that would be a choice, not a necessity. They might choose to explore the lands that mankind had abandoned, as Ciani had once tried to do. Who knew what secrets might be waiting for them, in the shadow of the Worldsend Mountains?

Then he thought of Ciani, and her vulnerability, and he muttered, “We don’t leave her alone.” Senzei nodded and moved closer to Ciani. “Not until we know for a fact that those things aren’t here in town.”

“You want me to Divine that?” Senzei asked.

He thought about it. “Dinner first. Let’s find ourselves rooms and settle the horses. Then.”

By then it would be night. The demon/adept Tarrant (which was he? Damien wondered. Was it possible to be both?) had said that the creatures were best tracked at night. They’d give it a shot and see if he was right. One try. It would be worth the risk. Wouldn’t it?

We’ll have to face the night soon enough, anyway, he thought dryly. There are no top-rank hotels in the rakhlands.

(Even as he thought that, he imagined Ciani’s voice—always tender, always teasing—as she challenged him, How do we know that?)

They took rooms in a cliffside inn that had gargoyles over every doorway—not Worked, Damien noted, but ugly enough to drive away any demon with aesthetic sensibilities—and crude iron grilles over the windows, twisted into some sort of sigil-sign. Again, not Worked. There was an absence of Working all over the city, Senzei pointed out, which was doubly jarring after the proliferation of wards in Jaggonath and the daes.

More like home, Damien thought. It was oddly comforting.

They ate. Strange shapes culled from the sea, inundated with local spices. Spongy tendrils of flesh in cream sauce, suckers sliced into delicate rings and fried, something small and spiderlike with its head and legs intact: pull the limbs off these little guys yourself, the menu urged. Kale was proud of its seafood.

And afterward, for dessert, a sense of anticipation so keen that the three could almost taste it. Mere sweets were bland by comparison, and one by one the travelers pushed them aside.

“It’s time,” Damien muttered. “Let’s go.”

They had chosen this particular hostel because of one very special facility: it had a flat, easily accessible roof. For a small bribe—” call it a damage deposit, the manager had said—“Damien had obtained the key. Now, in the darkening night, with only a few remaining stars and a single moon to light the sky, they let themselves out of the inn’s smoky confines, into the chill of evening.

The earth-fae would be weak up here—but that was good, Senzei had insisted. Good that the taint of the Forest would be thus diluted before he tried to Work it. Damien looked at his companion, saw the fear in his eyes. The excitement. He’s in his element, the priest thought. At last.

Damien loosened his sword in his scabbard—and then, as an afterthought, drew it free. There was no telling what manner of creature such a Working might call to them, or how quickly it might come. He made sure Ciani was safely on the other side of him before he nodded to Senzei: Yes. Go ahead.

The dark-haired Worker took a deep breath, steadied himself—and then began to weave a Seeing.

Power. A vast, unending seascape of power-swirls and eddies and cresting waves of it, earth-fae so fluid and deep that it laps up against the sides of the inn, and dashes a spray of limitless potential into the air before his eyes. Magnificent! For a moment Senzei can do no more than stare at it, drinking in the Sight. So much of it! So . . . raw. Chaotic. Potent. He considers the sterile city, its wordless walls and unWorked gates, and shakes his head in amazement. How can such a thing be? How can this kind of power exist, without men coming here to tame it? The city should be full of sorcerers—should cater to sorcerers—should be renowned among the fae-wise, as a focal point of power. So why isn’t it? What is there that his eyes can’t See, which has kept that from happening?

He opens himself up to the power, welcomes its wildness into the core of him. Not slowly, as he had meant to do. Not cautiously, as he knows it should be done. Joyfully—exuberantly—his soul’s barriers thrown wide open, the core of his being laid bare. And the fae pours into him. An ecstasy more intense than any sex suffuses his limbs: the taste of true power. Here, in this place, he might do anything. Do they want information? It is there for the Knowing. Do they need protection? Here, he might craft a Warding that would endure for ages. Had he envied the adepts of Jaggonath? For all their vision, they had never tasted this! He shivers in pleasure and awe as the power flows through him—wild power, wholly undisciplined, fae that lacks only his command to give it substance and purpose.

This is living, he thinks. This is what I was meant for!

In the far north, across the Serpent’s waist, a midnight sun is rising. Black sphere against ebony blackness, jet-pure; a thing that can only be Felt, not Seen. Into it all the light of the world is sucked, all the colors and textures that the fae contains: into the crystalline blackness, the Anti-Sun. He stares at it in adoration and horror and thinks: There, where all the power is concentrated, like matter in a black hole . . . there is the power we need for this quest. Power to shake the rakhlands and make our kill and move the earth besides!

And one thing is as certain as the night sky above him, the broad disk of Domina looming overhead: he alone can channel this power, can make it serve their purpose. Who else? Certainly not Ciani, whose skill was excised from her. Nor Damien, whose priestly Workings are too entangled with intellect, with questions of morality and correctness and Revivalist philosophy . . . no, of all of them only he can master this terrible force and make it serve their will.

It seems to Senzei that his life was spent preparing for this, making him ready for this single moment. He reaches out toward the source of the power—meaning to take it, to shape it, to let it shape him—but something grabs at him from behind, forcing him back. He struggles against it wildly, like an animal caught in a net. There, in the distance—there is freedom, there is power! He feels himself forced back one step, then another—and his soul screams out in anguish, as he is forced farther and farther away from the blackening dawn. Farther away from the only thing that can give him the power he hungers for, the only thing that can give him peace. The fae surges forward about him, mindless of his suffering; he grabs wildly at the rising tide, tries to link himself to it so that it will carry him with it, toward that point of Power . . . but something is in his way, something that drives the breath from his body in a sudden burst of pain, until he reels from the force of it and falls—his head striking hard against the ground, or is it the roof?—his senses caving in one by one as the ebony sun fades, the whole of his Vision fades . . .

Light. Real light. Moonlight, falling across the tarpaper roof. Senzei moaned, turning away from it. Searching for shadows. Anywhere.

Then, slowly, other things came into focus. People. Ciani’s beloved face, contorted with worry. Damien’s eyes, blazing with . . . what? His head ached; he couldn’t read it. His stomach ached, too, with a throbbing hurt that spoke of real bodily damage. He put a hand to his abdomen and winced. Tender, very tender.

“What . . . what happened?”

“You tried to walk off the roof,” Damien said quietly. “Ciani tried to stop you. I helped as soon as I could.” A brief nod indicated the deep purple fluid on his blade, the dark shapes that lay huddled and bleeding on all sides of them. Pain pounded in Senzei’s temples. “I’ve never seen anything manifest so fast,” Damien said. There was an odd tone in his voice which Senzei couldn’t identify. “Or in such quantity. You all right?”

He looked out over the roof’s low edge toward the north. Toward where the earth-fae still flowed, now invisible to his unWorked senses. Moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes; he blinked it free, felt it work its way slowly down his face.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I think so. It was . . .” He shivered. “Incredible.”

“Untamable, more likely. We should have known that. Should have guessed it when we saw the town.” Damien took out a handkerchief and wiped his sword clean. “I think it’s safe to say that now we know why there are so few Workings in Kale, yes? We’ll have to avoid that angle ourselves—at least until we get out of range of that.” He nodded toward the north as he resheathed his sword. Then he offered his hand to Senzei. “Can you stand?”

After a moment, he nodded. It took several tries, but at last the two of them managed to get him to his feet. He felt as though his limbs were made of gel, barely able to support him.

“It would have drawn you in,” the priest said quietly. A question.

Senzei hesitated. Considered it. “Yes. I think. I wanted to go to it. I wanted for it . . . to devour me. So I could be part of it. You . . . you can’t know.” He choked on the words, and a sense of terrible loss filled him. And fear. He could do no more than mutely shake his head. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Come on.” It was Ciani, slipping underneath one arm to help him walk. “Let’s get inside. We can talk about it later.”

“An adept,” Senzei muttered. “Can you imagine? To live with that vision, endlessly . . . one would drown in it . . .”

“Which is why there are no adepts in Kale,” Damien reminded him. “Remember your notes?”

Unless there is now, Senzei thought. Unless Tarrant followed us.

At the door that led into the building, Damien paused. He looked out over the tarpaper expanse of the roofs surface, at the dozen or so newborn demonlings that were slowly bleeding out their substance in the moonlight.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “It’ll cost us good money to have this cleaned up.”

Always practical, Senzei thought dryly. Who else would care?

Dear friends, if you could have seen what I have seen . . .

And then his thoughts slid down into darkness, and the blissful numbness of sleep.

Midnight. Plus some. An hour of peace, even this close to the whirlpool. Ciani was sleeping soundly—at last—and Senzei was still lost in the oblivion of his healing trance. The three of them were sharing a suite, which had turned out to be the perfect situation; Damien could check on his companions easily enough, but if one of them happened to wake in the night and glance about before returning to sleep, they wouldn’t see that he’d left. He had left a note on his pillow just in case, but didn’t really expect anyone to find it; he should be back long before they awoke. And hopefully, he would have some new answers.

The town itself was silent, so much so that he could hear the soft wash of salt-laden waves against Kale’s rocky shore. He made his way toward the sound, using it as a compass to maneuver through the narrow, twisting streets.

As with most of the northern coast, Kale’s shoreline was a series of ragged cliffs and overhangs, inhospitable to travelers. Damien worked his way slowly westward, toward the port itself. Natural caverns were etched deep into the rock beneath him, and periodically something dark would fly out of the mouth of one, to shriek its way across the jagged shallows. Not a good place for boats or men, he reflected. But it was still far safer than the ocean shorelines which were battered by an endless procession of tsunami; and so man had forced this coast to accept a port wherever there was the slightest opening for one, and would make do with its shortcomings. Erna was a harsh mistress.

Soon, the cliff edge he traversed began to drop. A narrow path led him around several major obstacles, to a place where the earth, shaken by one too many tremors, had collapsed. A mountain of jagged boulders sloped down to the Serpent, covered over by a webwork of wooden walkways and stairs that made safe descent, if strenuous, possible.

Damien clambered down, noting that there was activity about several of the boats that were docked below. Erna’s opposing moons made for a complex tidal pattern, and the few windows of opportunity that occurred must be grasped when they did; in the city itself life might subside at sunset, but Kale’s shipping fleets never rested.

At last he reached a sizable boardwalk that gave him a level surface to the water’s edge. Long piers stretched out across miles of water, bridging the boulder-strewn shallows. At high tide it was perhaps possible for a boat to come in close to the shore itself; at low tide, the sailors would have quite a hike after docking. For a moment Damien wondered why they hadn’t done something more permanent to fill the land in, or thoroughly dredge it out; then he remembered where he was, and reminded himself: There is no such thing as permanence, in this part of the world. What man chooses to construct, earthquakes can unconstruct in an instant. Better to build flexibly—or at least temporarily—and give way to Nature’s temper tantrums when they occur.

Come to think of it, didn’t the whole Stekkis River shift once, within recent centuries? Wasn’t Merentha once the port city at its mouth, instead of Kale? It must be hard to invest time or money in a city that might be made worthless tomorrow, he thought. That alone would explain an awful lot about the city’s appearance.

He watched the men moving about the piers for some time, assessing various facets of their activity. Ganji-on—the-Cliffs had a similar port, and it was no hard task for him to draw parallels between them. After a while, he thought he saw what he was looking for, and he began to pick his way over to the far eastern end of the docks, near where the cliffs began to rise. There was a small boat docked there, whose relatively shallow draft was well suited to inhospitable ports. As he came closer, he could see that it had strong masts and a small steam turbine in the rear; its owner didn’t trust technology, but had enough survival sense to pack it as a backup. Excellent. Damien assessed its size, its probable speed, the amount of room on board, and nodded. This one was promising.

He walked out to where the small ship was moored. Two men were bustling about its deck, gathering up the last of some precious cargo. A third stood at the bow and watched; he glanced up shortly when Damien approached but didn’t acknowledge him otherwise. Damien waited. The cargo was loaded into a coarse hand-wagon with a shipping emblem seared into its side. When it was full the two men handed documents to the third, who read them by moonlight. And nodded. Not until the laborers had grabbed hold of the handcart and begun to pull it toward shore—not until they were out of hearing, and almost out of sight—did the overseer acknowledge Damien with his eyes and slowly walk over to meet him.

“C’n I help you?”

Damien nodded towards the boat. “Yours?”

The overseer assessed him. “Maybe.”

“I need to hire transportation.”

The man said nothing.

“I’m prepared to pay well for it.”

The man chuckled. “That’s vulkin’ fortunate. It don’t come cheap.”

Somewhat disdainfully, Damien pulled a small leather pouch from his pocket; he rattled it once, so that the sound of metal striking metal was clearly audible.

The man’s nostrils flared, like an animal scenting its prey. “Where you headed?”

“East. Southern shore. Near the mouth of the Achron River. You interested?”

The man coughed, and spat into the water. “You’d need more’n money to buy that kind of passage.”

“What, then?”

“You need a pilot that’s vulkin’ set on suicide—which I’m not. That’s some of the worst shoreline on the Serpent.” He grinned, showing stained and chipped teeth. “How about somewhere else for vacation, eh? I hear there’s a good river up north.”

“It’s business,” Damien said shortly.

“Then I’m real sorry.” He looked hungrily at the purse, but his expression didn’t soften. “That’s death on the rocks, that trip. I don’t want none of it. No one will. Not unless you can find some young fool of a merchant’s son with a spanking new yacht to wreck . . . and then you’d just die in the landing, along with ’im. You catch my drift?”

Damien stretched open the mouth of the purse and spilled two gold coins into the palm of his hand. The man’s eyes widened.

“Perhaps you know someone who can take us.”

The man hesitated—it seemed that two parts of him were at war with each other—but at last he shook his head. “Not in Kale, Mer. Don’t know anyone foolish enough to try. Sorry.” He chuckled. “Wish I even had a good lie, for that kind of money.”

Damien was about to speak when another voice—smooth as the night air and nearly as quiet—intruded.

“I believe the gentleman doesn’t understand the value of your currency.”

He turned quickly toward the source of the voice, and found Gerald Tarrant standing not ten feet from them.

“Permit me,” the tall man said, bowing slightly.

After a moment Damien nodded. Tarrant approached—and withdrew a thin golden disk from his tunic, which he displayed to the mariner.

The side that Damien saw was a familiar image: it was the earth-disk that the stranger had displayed in Briand. But whatever was on the other side made the mariner’s face go white beneath its stubble, the jaw dropping slack beneath.

“Tell him what he needs to know,” Tarrant said quietly.

The man looked over his shoulder—northward, across the Serpent—and then stammered, “Not here. You understand? You need to go to Morgot. That’s where the kind of men would be, who could help you. Morgot.”

Damien looked questioningly at Tarrant, who explained, “an island just north of here. A caldera, made into a port. It occasionally serves as a way station for the . . . shall we say, less than reputable sort?”

He reached over toward Damien, so smoothly and so quickly that the priest failed to react in time. He took the gold coins out of his hand, and gave them to the mariner. A faint chill touched the priest’s flesh where contact had almost been made.

“You’ll take his party over to Morgot tomorrow.” Tarrant’s tone was one of confident authority. It was hard to say exactly where in his words or his manner the threat was so evident. “No questions asked. Agreed?”

The man took the money awkwardly, as though not quite sure what the ritual of acceptance should be. “Yes, your lordship,” he whispered. “Of course, your lordship.” He scrambled down to the deck of his craft and disappeared hurriedly into the cabin; after a few minutes had passed without him reappearing, Tarrant turned to Damien, clearly satisfied that the man would not disturb them.

“Forgive me for intruding in your business.”

Damien forced himself to respond to the politeness of the man’s manner, rather than what he imagined lay beneath the surface. Which made his skin crawl. “Not at all. Thank you.”

“I think you now have what you came out into the night to find.” Tarrant said quietly.

“Now I do,” he assured him.

Tarrant laughed softly. “You’re a curious man, priest. Courageous enough to take on the demons of Kale, not to mention the rakh’s vicious constructs . . . but not quite confident enough to share a dae’s fireside with another human traveler.”

“Are you that?” Damien said sharply.

Tarrant’s expression tightened, ever so slightly. The pale eyes narrowed. “Am I what?”

“Human.”

“Ah. Let’s not get into philosophy, shall we? Say that I was born a man—as you were—and as for what a man may become . . . we don’t all follow paths that our mothers would have approved of, do we?”

“A bit of an understatement, in your case.”

The silver eyes met his. Cold, so cold. The dead might have eyes like that. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“No,” he said bluntly. “Should I?”

“Some have chosen to.”

Ciani wants to, Damien thought. And: I never will.

“You killed that boy. In Briand.”

“Yes. I told you why.”

“And I believed it—at the time.” It was impossible to tell from the man’s expression whether he would buy a bluff or see right through it. He decided to chance it. “I didn’t know then what I do now.”

“Ah.” Tarrant’s eyes were fixed on him: piercing through his wordly image, weighing his soul. “I did underestimate you,” he said at last. “My apologies. It won’t happen again.”

He felt like he had won points in some game, without even knowing what he was playing. Or if he would ever see the rulebook. He indicated the boat that was tied up before them, in whose cabin the mariner was presumably still cowering. Probably won’t show his face until we’re out of here, he thought. Then corrected himself: Until Tarrant’s out of here.

“What was it you showed him?”

Tarrant shrugged. “I merely indicated that I understood the situation.”

“Which is?”

“Morgot plays host to a number of legitimate shipping concerns. It’s also a refuge for smugglers and other unsavory types. For all he knew, you were some kind of local inspector trying to track down a freelance. Out to hurt his friends. You see,” he said quietly, “trying to maneuver in this region without knowing the rules can be . . . difficult.”

“And you know the rules.”

He shrugged. “This is my home.”

“Kale.”

No answer. Only silent, unvoiced amusement.

“He called you lordship,” Damien pressed.

“An ancient honorific. Some men still use it. Does it bother you so much?”

He met Tarrant’s eyes—so pale, so cold—and suddenly understood what made the man so dangerous. Control. Over himself, over his environment . . . and over everyone who dealt with him.

“It would seem,” the priest said quietly, “that we hunt the same creatures.”

“So it would seem.”

“For the same purpose?”

Again Tarrant shrugged; the gesture was anything but casual. “I want them out of the human lands. If they die en route . . . so much the better.”

Damien hesitated; he felt as though he were balanced on the edge of a precipice, and anything—the wrong words, even the wrong thoughts—might send him over. But he knew why he had come here. What he had to do. He might not like it, but his dreams had made it clear.

“We’re here to kill them.”

Tarrant smiled indulgently. “I know.”

“My friends think you could help us.”

“And you don’t.”

This time it was Damien’s turn not to answer.

One corner of Tarrant’s mouth twitched slightly; a smile? “We do serve the same cause,” he observed. “If you won’t trust me, trust in that.”

“Should I trust you?”

“I would say . . .” He smiled, and shook his head. “No. Not you.”

“But you’re willing to help us.”

“For as long as our paths coincide—and our purposes are compatible—yes.” He indicated the boat beside them, the caldera in the distance. “I thought I made that clear.”

Damien drew in a deep breath, tried to settle his unease. It was dangerous to let the man know their weakness—but if he was to help them, he would have to. There was no other way.

“We’ve lost the trail,” he said quietly. Watching Tarrant for his reaction. “We can’t Work the fae here.”

“Most can’t,” he agreed.

“The currents are—”

Tarrant waved him to silence.

For a moment the tall man just stood there, nostrils flared as if to test the air. Then he turned toward the shoreline. Casually, as if his only intention was to watch the waves break. He raised a hand—but made no gestures with it, nor did Damien hear a whispered key for Binding.

Minutes passed.

“They’re not here,” he said at last. “Not in Kale.” He stared southward a moment longer, then added quietly, “But this was their route. Without question.”

“You’re sure.”

“Their taint is unmistakable.” He turned back to the priest—and for a moment it seemed that his eyes were not gray but black, his gaze a measureless emptiness. “And besides, if they mean to go home, this is the only way to do it. Short of swimming—or climbing the Worldsend.”

“And how is it that you can Work the fae here?”

The stranger smiled; his perfect white teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Call it practice.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough. You’re too full of questions, priest. I don’t make a habit of explaining myself.”

“That’s too bad. I like to know who I’m traveling with.”

Tarrant seemed amused. “Is that an invitation?”

“We’ve just booked passage to Morgot. You’re welcome to join us . . . unless you’d like to swim.”

“I prefer to leave that to the fish, thank you. But yes, I’ll travel with you tomorrow. For as long as our paths coincide, you may count on me.”

He turned away as if to leave—and then looked back at Damien. “We don’t leave until dusk, of course. I prefer not to travel in sunlight. But you guessed that, didn’t you? You guessed so very much.” He smiled, and bowed his head ever so slightly. “Until tomorrow, Reverend Vryce.”

Speechless, Damien watched while Tarrant strode the length of the pier, disappearing at last into the shadows that lay along the shore. The priest’s hands clenched into fists slowly, then unclenched, then repeated the pattern. Trying to bleed off some of the tension, so that the night wouldn’t throw his own fears back at him. The last thing he needed now was a battle with brainless demonlings. He needed to think.

What’s done is done. You made your decision, and now you’ll have to live with the consequences. For better and for worse.

There was a stirring inside the boat’s small cabin, as if in response to the sudden silence without. After a moment the mariner peeked out; when he saw that Damien was still there, he began to withdraw.

“He’s gone,” the priest said quickly. “But I do need to talk to you.”

The man hesitated, then came out onto the deck. “Mer?”

“The trip tomorrow.” He felt himself stiffen, fought to keep the tension out of his voice. “We won’t be able to leave until after dusk.”

The man just stared at him. “I figured,” he said at last. “You travel with that kind, those are the hours.”

He started to turn away, but Damien indicated with a gesture that he wasn’t done with him.

“Mer?”

“What was the medallion he showed you?” the priest asked tightly. “What did it mean?”

The man hesitated; for a minute, it looked like he wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Damien just waited. And finally the man muttered, “The Forest. The Hunter. His servants wear that sigil.” He looked up at Damien; his expression was a warning. “We don’t anger that kind. I suggest you don’t either. Not in this region, anyway.” Maybe nowhere at all, his face seemed to say. “They take care of their own. Their enemies die. No exception. You understand?”

“I understand,” Damien said quietly. Hearing his own thoughts echo within him, like that of a stranger.

Evil is what you make of it. We use what tools we must.

“Damn it!” he hissed angrily, when the man was out of hearing. It was a long while before he started back.

20

The sun was still shining brightly when Tobi Zendel’s steam-driven boat approached the Morgot docks. With care, he brought it in safely at the far end of the harbor. There were few people about. Which meant few police and few inspectors. That was intentional. With the xandu on board—and a damned strange passenger to boot—he was anxious to avoid anyone in uniform.

“This is it,” he told her. He looped a mooring line over a convenient post, then leapt up onto the pier to secure it. The boat rubbed up gently against the cold, swollen wood. “Sorry I can’t take you closer in by boat, but . . . well, hey.” He offered her a hand to help her onto the pier but she looked right through him, as if it were beneath her pride to notice. After a moment his hand withdrew. She stepped up easily onto the boat’s polished edge, and from there continued without hesitation or slippage to step across the water to the more stable surface of the pier.

“You got your sea legs fast, that’s for sure.” He grabbed at another rope from the back end of the boat and affixed that, too; then he tested them both. “Tell you what. I need to arrange for some fuel before I start back. You come with me, I’ll show you the way up to the travelers’ facilities. Okay?” She said nothing. He patted the last of his mooring lines affectionately, then looked back uneasily at the boat. “Think I ought to secure him? I mean, I left him inside and all . . . but those are damned flimsy walls, you know what I mean? Not meant to do much more than keep out the rain.” He glanced at her. Her expression was unreadable. “Think so?” Still nothing. At last he shrugged and climbed back down onto the slowly shifting deck.

She waited.

After a moment, there was a noise from inside the cabin. Some quick movement, and one sharp impact against the wall. Then silence.

She waited.

The xandu climbed out of the cabin and shook itself quickly, like a cat shedding water. It looked at her, at the well-worn pier, and the distance between them. And then, in one powerful leap, it bypassed all the obstacles. Its feet landed heavily on the thick planks by her side, toenails digging into the soft wood for balance.

Wordlessly, she took a small bit of cloth from out of her right hip pocket. And wiped its two horns dry, of blood and sea-spray both.

They walked to where the trees began, and made sure they were well out of sight before she mounted.

21

Gerald Tarrant arrived promptly at sunset. His height and his bearing made him stand out from the locals, even at a distance: long, easy stride contrasted with their short-legged hustling, fluid grace set against their unrefined simplicity. Aristocratic, Damien thought. In the Revivalist sense of the word. He wondered why the adjective hadn’t occurred to him before.

The horses had been on edge since being lowered like cargo from the eastern cliff wall; now, as Tarrant approached, they grew even more agitated. Damien moved closer to his mount and put his hand on its shoulder. Through the contact he could feel the animal’s fear, a primal response to dangers sensed but not yet comprehended.

“I know just how you feel,” he muttered, stroking it.

Gerald Tarrant was all politeness, as always. And as always, there was a dark undercurrent not quite concealed by his genteel facade. Stronger than before, Damien noticed. Or perhaps simply more obvious. Was that in response to the local fae, which would tend to intensify any malevolence? Or was it simply that the mask of good nature he normally assumed was allowed to slip a bit, now that he was close to home?

Or your own fertile imagination working overtime, he cautioned himself. Senzei and Ciani aren’t having any problem with him.

Not quite true. Senzei was polite, but Damien knew him well enough to read the added tension in his manner. The revelation of Tarrant’s origin hadn’t pleased him any more than it did Damien. But Ciani—

With consummate grace, Tarrant walked to where she stood, took her hand in his, and bowed gallantly. Gritting his teeth, Damien was forced to acknowledge the man’s charm.

“Watch her,” he muttered, and Senzei nodded. Tarrant’s ties to the Hunter should have been enough to make Ciani keep her distance—except that she was Ciani, and even before the accident she had loved knowledge for its own sake, without the “taint” of moral judgment. With a sinking feeling Damien realized just how drawn she would be to the Hunter, and to the mystery that he represented. It would mean little to her that he tortured human women as a pastime, save as one more fact for her to devour. For the first time it occurred to him just what a loremaster’s neutrality meant, and it made his stomach turn. He had never considered it in quite that way before.

Tarrant came over to where he stood beside the horses; instinctively he moved closer to his own mount, protecting it. Tarrant regarded the animals for a moment, nostrils flaring slightly as he tested their scent. Then he touched them lightly, one after the other. Just that. As contact was made with each animal it calmed, and when it was broken each lowered its nose to the planks of the deck, as if imagining that it was not at sea, but somewhere on its favorite grazing ground.

“Not mine,” Damien warned him.

“As you wish.” They were being approached by the boat’s captain and owner; the grubby mariner of the day before had been transformed by a shave and a change of clothing into something marginally neater, but no less obsequious. He clearly considered Tarrant the master of this expedition.

“Welcome on board, your lordship.”

“The wind is adequate?” Tarrant asked.

“Excellent, your lordship. Of course.”

“It will hold until we reach Morgot,” he promised.

“Thank you, your lordship.”

Tarrant glanced about the deck, taking in all of it: the travelers, their luggage, the newly docile mounts. And Damien, with his own horse nervously pawing the deck. He spared an amused, indulgent nod for the pair of them, then told the man briskly, “All’s in order. Take us out.”

“Yes, your lordship.”

Mooring lines were cast off, sails were raised to catch the wind, and they began to move. The piers gave way to open harbor, and then to the sea. Dark waves capped by moonlight, and a wake of blue-white foam behind them. When the ride was smooth enough for study, Senzei took out his maps again and began to go over them with Ciani. Trying to inspire her enthusiasm? Damien winced at the memory of how lively she had been only a handful of days ago. And he ached anew, for the loss of the woman he had come to know so well.

After a time he moved to the bow of the small ship, and tried to make out the shape of what would be Morgot. But the island was too dark, or too small, or else too far away. For a moment he thought he saw mountains in the distance—but no, those must be low-lying clouds that fooled his eye. The northern mountains were too far away to be glimpsed from here.

“You’re apprehensive.”

He whipped about, a combat-trained reaction. How did the man manage to come up so close behind him without him being aware of it?

“Shouldn’t I be?” he retorted stiffly.

Gerald Tarrant chuckled. “Here, where no rakh-born demon can reach you? Remember the power of deep water, priest. They can’t even sense your trail, over this.”

He moved so that he could look out over the waves without quite losing sight of Tarrant. Miles upon miles of water surrounded them, flowing over earth and earth-fae alike. Far beneath them, hidden from sight, the currents still flowed northward, but they clung to the surface of the earth’s crust. Here, above the waves, such power was all but inaccessible. Faeborn creatures usually avoided crossing bodies of water for that reason; shallow waters might rob them of their special powers, and deep enough waters might cost them their life.

He wondered if the creature called the Hunter could survive such a crossing. Was that why he sent out his minions, his constructs, but never left the Forest himself? Or was his form simply so unhuman that the men who plied the straits for a living would respond poorly to his overtures—unlike their response to the elegant, courteous Gerald Tarrant?

Easy, priest. One quest at a time. Let’s clean up the rakhlands first, then take a good look at the Forest. Too many battles at once will cost you everything.

Black water, pale blue moons. Domina overhead, rising as they sailed northwards, and the whiter crescent of Casca counter-rising in the west: a heavenly counterpoint. For an instant he sensed a greater Pattern forming between them, as if the tides of light and gravity were cojoined with the rhythms of lunar rotation in a delicate, ever-shifting web of power. Then the moment was gone, and the night was merely dark.

“Yes,” Tarrant whispered. “That was it.”

Damien looked up at him.

“Tidal fae. The most tenuous of all powers—and the most potent.” The silver eyes looked down on him, reflecting the cool blue of moonlight. “You’re a very fortunate man, Reverend Vryce. Few men ever see such a thing.”

“It was beautiful.”

“Yes,” Tarrant agreed. There was a strange hush to his voice. “The tidal power is that.”

“Can it be worked?”

“Not by such as you or I,” he responded. “Sometimes women can See it—very rarely—but no human I know of has ever mastered it. Too variable a power. Very dangerous.”

Damien looked up at him. “You’ve tried,” he said quietly.

“In my youth,” he agreed. “I tried everything. That particular experiment nearly killed me.” The pale eyes sparkled with some secret amusement. “Does it comfort you, to imagine I could die?”

“We’re all mortal,” he said gruffly.

“Are we?”

“All of us. Even the faeborn.”

“Certainly the faeborn. They lack the innovation—and thus the initiative—to make it otherwise. But men? With all this power waiting to be harnessed? Have you never dreamed of immortality, priest? Never once wondered what the fae might do for you, if you harnessed it to fend off death?”

Something stirred inside Damien, that was half pride and half faith. It was the core of his strength, and he wielded it proudly. “I think you forget the God I serve,” he told Tarrant. “Those of my calling neither fear death, nor doubt their own immortality.”

For a brief moment, there was something in the other man’s expression that was strangely human. Strangely vulnerable. And then the moment was gone and the cold, mocking mask was back in place. “Touche,” he muttered, with a slight bow. “I should know better than to fence rhetoric with your kind. My apologies.”

And abruptly he left, for the company of the others. Damien just stared after him. Wondering what it was that he had seen in Tarrant’s face—so fleeting, but so very human— and wondering why it was that that brief hint of humanity chilled him more than all other facets of the man combined.

Morgot. It took shape slowly on the horizon, a mountain of deep gray jutting up from the glassy blackness of the water. As they came closer, Damien could make out details, etched in moonlight: the jagged upper edge of a crater’s rim, the thick mass of vegetation clinging to its slopes, the place where the walls had collapsed into the sea, permitting entrance into the crater’s mouth. Dark, all of it dark. Was there no night life on Morgot?

Then, as if in answer to his thoughts, a bright light flashed on one side of the entrance gap. It was followed seconds later by a matching light on the other side, of the same angle and intensity. The ship’s captain hurried toward the mirrored lamp that was affixed to the forward mast. He struck a match and applied it; flame surged upward in the glass enclosure, made triply brilliant by the mirrors behind it. Using shutters to focus its beam, he turned it toward the challenging lights at the caldera’s entrance. Short and long bursts of light in carefully measured proportion flashed across the water toward Morgot; a few seconds later, a similar code was returned. The captain muttered to himself as he interpreted Morgot’s messages, reciting weather warnings, customs codes, docking instructions. At last he seemed satisfied and shuttered the signal lantern.

“Cleared to go in,” he muttered—then added, for his passengers’ benefit, “Risky passage at night. Could be worse, though.” He grinned. “Could be moonless.”

He moved to the stern of the boat, then, and kicked the small furnace open. Inside, an orange fire hungrily consumed its store of fuel. He fed it more. Then, when he was satisfied that the heat was as it should be, and that the volume of steam thus produced was to his satisfaction, he engaged the boat’s small turbine. For some minutes more he remained by the mechanism, following each motion with his eye, reaffirming the patterns of how it worked in his own mind. That was necessary to counteract any doubts his passengers might have had about it, as well as the formless fears of the horses. The deep water beneath them meant that such fears couldn’t manifest too easily, but it never hurt to make sure. One good jinxer on board and the whole mechanism could blow sky high.

When he was finally satisfied with the machine’s performance, he ordered the sails struck and steered them toward Morgot. Entering the gap in the crater wall was like entering a tunnel: dark, silent but for the sound of the turbine, claustrophobically close. The crater’s ragged edge towered over them on both sides, massive walls of igneous rock that seemed precariously balanced, dangerously topheavy. What little moonlight seeped down into the narrow passage only worsened the illusion, and Damien found himself holding his breath, all too aware of what the most minimal earthquake could do to such a structure. And earthquakes there must be in quantity, right at the heart of a collision zone. But then, just when it seemed that their boat wouldn’t make it through to the end, the gap widened. Enough so that another boat, traveling in the opposite direction, could pass them in safety. They came about a sharp jag in the wall—

And Morgot’s interior unfolded before them in all its luminous splendor.

Stars. That was Damien’s first impression: a universe filled with stars, upon whose light they floated. On all sides the crater’s walls rose up about them, its curving slopes lit by thousands upon thousands of tiny flickering lights: lanterns, hearth-lights, port markers, open fires. Lights flickered along the shoreline, lights lined the water’s edge, lights shone from every boat and pier—and all of it was reflected in the rippling harbor water, each light mirrored a thousand times over, each image dancing energetically to the rhythm of the waves. They were in a vast bowl filled with stars, floating in a dark summer sky. The beauty of it—and the disorientation—was breathtaking.

He heard soft footsteps coming up behind him, guessed at their source. But not even Tarrant could make him turn from that glorious vision.

“Welcome to the north,” the man said quietly.

Colored lanterns marked each of the boats in the harbor; their captain fitted a colored gel to his own signal lantern, and red sparks danced in the water on all sides of them. “Not bad, eh? Best beer in the eastlands, to bet. It’s out of Jahanna.”

“Jahanna?”

“The Forest,” Senzei explained. He and Ciani had come up to join them at the bow, to watch the sea of scarlet stars part before their hull.

“The Forest makes beer?”

The captain grinned. “Can you think of something that place’d need more, besides a good drink?”

The harbor was busy—so much so that Damien wondered if Earth hadn’t looked like this, once; a place where night contained no special dangers, where business—and pleasure—might be conducted at any hour. What was Earth like now? It had been half-covered in steel and concrete when the colony ships first left it. How many tens of thousands of years ago was that? The colonists had crossed a third of the galaxy in coldsleep to get here; how many Earth-years would that take? Damien knew the theories—and he also knew that any real knowledge of how interstellar travel had worked had been destroyed in the First Sacrifice. All they had left were guesses.

The efficacy of sacrifice, the Prophet had written, is in direct proportion to the value of that which is destroyed.

And Ian Casca damned well knew that, Damien thought bitterly. And understood its implications, all too well. If only they could have stopped him . . . But there was no point in pursuing that train of thought, and he knew it. What was done was done. If mere regret could have brought the Earth ship back, it would have done that long ago.

Wending his way through a bewildering array of light and shadow, the captain brought them unerringly to the proper pier, and came up against it with hardly a bump to jar their concentration. The horses looked up slowly, dazed, and Damien and his two companions moved to get them off the boat before their full faculties returned.

When they had finished that job, Damien turned to pay the captain for their passage—and found Gerald Tarrant counting out coins from a small velvet purse. Gold, by the look of it.

“That isn’t necessary—”

“The Forest pays its servants well,” he said shortly. “Which is why such men are willing to serve us at inconvenient hours.” Then he looked up at Damien; his pale eyes sparkled. “One of the reasons.”

“Damien.” It was Ciani; she pointed along the pier with one hand, holding reins in the other. A man in uniform was walking toward them.

“Police?”

“Probably customs.” Tarrant tucked the small purse into his outer tunic, then opened that garment at the neck. The gold of the Forest medallion glinted conspicuously between layers of blue and black silk. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Is there anything you haven’t prearranged?” Damien said sharply.

He seemed amused. “You mean, do I ever leave anything to chance?” He smiled. “Not by choice, priest.”

He moved off to deal with the official. When he was out of hearing, Damien walked over to where Ciani was, and helped her fasten the travel packs back onto their mounts.

“He’s interesting,” he said quietly. An opening.

“And you’re jealous.”

He stepped back and feigned astonishment.

She tightened the last strap on her own mount’s harness, then turned to him. “Well, you are.” She was smiling—not broadly, not energetically, but with genuine humor. It’s a start, he thought. “Admit it.”

And suddenly he wanted her. Wanted her as he had in Jaggonath, wanted any little bit of the old Ciani that was left inside her, wanted to take that bit and nurture it and coax it into life, until she could look at him and smile like that and her eyes would be the same, her expression would be what it once had been . . . and that precious feeling would be there again, binding them, making them oblivious to Tarrant and the rakh and all such mundane concerns.

The sudden rush of emotion took his breath away; with effort he managed, “Tarrant?”

“Deny it,” she dared him.

“Jealous?”

“Damien.” She stepped forward toward him, close enough to touch. And she put a hand to the side of his face, soft warm palm against the coarseness of a long day’s stubble. “Women know things like that. Did you think you were hiding it?” Her eyes sparkled—and it did seem that there was life in them, a hint of a younger, unviolated Ciani. “You’re not a subtle man, you know.”

He was about to respond when Senzei coughed diplomatically: Tarrant was back. Damien stepped back from Ciani, putting a less intimate distance between them—but there was an unspoken challenge in his expression as he turned to face the Forest’s servant, and he knew without doubt that it communicated exactly what he meant it to.

“Can you pick up a trail?” he asked him.

“Unlikely,” Tarrant answered. “Not here, at any rate. A live volcano exudes its own fae, in quantity; that, and the strength of the northbound current, will muddy the trail considerably.” He looked up toward the crest of the cone, at the lights that marked the crater’s upper edge. “Perhaps up there it can be managed. Perhaps. There should be an inn, at any rate, and the three of you will want refreshment.” He began to lead them toward the narrow shoreline, but Damien stopped him.

“A live volcano?” he asked. “I thought Morgot was extinct. You’re telling me this thing could go off beneath our feet?”

“The verb you’re looking for is vulk. And as for this being an extinct volcano, there’s no such thing. Not in a collision zone. All we know about Morgot is that it hasn’t erupted while man has been present on Erna—a mere twelve hundred years. That’s nothing, geologically speaking. Volcanoes can have a period considerably longer than that. Ten thousand years—one hundred thousand—perhaps even longer.” He smiled. “Or twelve hundred and one, for that matter. So I would say that if you want to eat and get some kind of a fix on things we should start moving now. Who knows what the next hour may bring?”

“All the sorcerers in the Forest,” Damien muttered to Ciani, “and we have to get a smartass.”

She grinned at that. And he put his arm around her. And felt for the first time since leaving—the first time since the attack on the Fae Shoppe—that things were going to be all right. It would take a lot of work and one hell of a lot of risk to assure it . . . but that was what life was all about, wasn’t it?

The path up to the inn was steep and narrow, a winding switchback road barely wide enough for them to traverse single file. Rushlights bordered the path along its outer edge, illuminating a sheer drop down to the rocky shore beneath.

“Lovely place,” Damien muttered.

After what seemed like hours—but it must have been much less than that, the crater’s edge simply wasn’t that high up—the path widened out, and a broad shoulder developed along its outer edge. Soon trees became visible, their roots trailing down like tangled snakes, their bare branches breaking up the moonlight into webwork patterns across the road. As they continued, more and more trees began to crowd the shoulder until the harbor beneath them was no longer visible. Then they reached the crest itself—and they stopped for a moment, to gaze out upon one of the most infamous territories in man’s domain.

“So close,” Ciani whispered.

It was close. A mere channel separated Morgot’s northern boundary from the shore of the mainland; it could be swum, if one were foolish enough to try it. Ferries plied the distance even as they watched, and disappeared into the base of the caldera. Some kind of tunnel there, Damien decided. And: Hell of a lot of traffic for a place like that.

“You make assumptions.” It was Gerald Tarrant’s voice, disconcertingly close behind him. “Where there is commerce, there will be men. And the Forest holds its own in trade.”

But in what sort of goods! Damien thought darkly.

The inn at the head of the winding road was clearly a popular one. Half a dozen horses were roped to a lead rail outside the front door, and the stable-boy who ran out to greet them looked like he’d been used pretty hard for most of the night.

“Staying the day, mers?” he asked.

The travelers looked at each other—and at Tarrant—and at last Senzei answered, “Looks like it.” To the others he said, “Go on inside. I’ll unload.”

The interior of the inn was dim and smoky, rushlights serving as lamps along the outer walls. A fire burned in an open pit at the far end of the room, but it wasn’t quite enough to banish the autumn chill. Despite the cold, Damien chose a table far from the fire; it was quieter there, and somewhat more private. It seemed safer.

There were menus already waiting on the table, and Ciani opened one as she sat. She looked at it for a moment, scanning its contents—and then her eyes went wide.

“There’s blood on the menu,” she whispered.

“It’s a rough place,” Damien observed. He dropped his sword harness over the back of a chair.

Tarrant smiled coldly! “I don’t believe that’s what the lady meant.”

He looked at her. She nodded slowly. And said, “There’s blood listed on the menu.”

It took him a second to find his voice. “Animal or human?”

“Several varieties. I believe . . .” She looked at the menu again. “The human is more expensive.”

“Tastes differ,” Tarrant said quietly. “Morgot prides itself on being hospitable to all travelers.”

“And what will you be having?”

He laughed softly. “Nothing, for now. I thought that while the three of you ate I might take a look around.”

“At the fae?”

“If it’s possible. There was a nice little clearing about a hundred yards back. It should offer as good a view as any. I’ll be back shortly,” he promised.

You do that, Damien thought.

Senzei joined them a few minutes later, their valuables in tow. Then a young boy, introducing himself as Hash, offered to serve as their waiter. The blood? he said, in response to Damien’s query. Quite healthy. Freshness guaranteed. Now, if the gentleman had a particular type in mind . . .

Damien shuddered, and told him just to bring a drink. Anything that wasn’t red. He didn’t hear what Senzei and Ciani ordered; his attention was fixed on the door to the outside, his imagination fixed on the man just beyond it.

“You worried?” Senzei asked.

Damien looked at him sharply. “Shouldn’t I be?”

“Why don’t you go check on him?”

He started to protest, then stopped himself. And stood. “I will,” he promised. “If the food comes before I get back . . .” Then something has gone very wrong. “Eat without me,” he said simply.

He took his sword with him.

Outside, the night was cold. They hadn’t noticed it on the climb up—the climb itself must have warmed them—but now, alone in the darkness, he wrapped his jacket tightly about himself and thought, Winter’s coming. Traveling will get harder. Everything will get harder.

Coming up north didn’t help.

A short distance from the inn’s front door, he found a small clearing that looked out over the harbor. Gerald Tarrant was standing there, eyes slowly scanning the crater’s interior. Once. Twice. Again.

At last, Damien dared, “Anything?”

He hesitated. “Hard to say. A trace, perhaps. Hard to focus on. Nearly every signal is drowned out by the volcano’s outpouring . . . very little is comprehensible. The image of someone watching stands out—not our quarry, I might add—and a taint at the harbor’s mouth which might have been left by the ones we seek. But as for when they left here, or exactly where they went . . . the interference is simply too great.”

“Like trying to search for a candle flame in front of the sun,” Damien said quietly.

Tarrant glanced at him. “It’s been a long time since I stared at the sun,” he said dryly.

Damien stepped forward—and was about to speak, when the slamming of the inn’s door warned him that someone else was about to join them. He looked back the way he had come and saw Ciani running toward them. Senzei was right behind her.

When she came to where the two men stood she stopped, and then hesitated; there was a sense of wrongness about her that Damien was hard put to identify, but it was enough to put him on his guard. Senzei tried to put a restraining hand on her arm, but she pulled away sharply.

“I want to be here,” she told them. Something about the cadence of her voice seemed oddly wrong, as though the words were being forced out. By her, or someone else? “When things are decided. I need to be here. Please . . .”

“She just got up and left,” Senzei said. “I tried to stop her, but she didn’t give me any warning. I had to leave the stuff behind—”

Damien strode to her, quickly. His heart was pounding in a fevered rhythm he knew all too well, and he felt his sword hand tensing in combat readiness as he took her firmly by the arm and said, “We’re going back. Now. We can talk inside. You should never have come out here, Cee . . .” And would never have, he thought grimly. Not without some sorcerous influence to cloud your judgment.

“Too late for that.” Tarrant said softly. He nodded toward the trees on the far side of the road, to where motion that was not windborn stirred the dying branches. Ciani’s eyes, mesmerized, followed the motion. “They have us,” the tall man whispered.

And the creatures attacked. Not merely three of them now, but a band whose numbers had clearly been swelled by reinforcements. They came from the far side of the road, and Damien had barely a moment to reflect that if luck had been against them—if Tarrant had chosen that side of the caldera’s rim for his efforts—the humans would have been slaughtered before they could make a move to defend themselves. As it was, there was less than a second before they struck, and Damien used it. He shoved Ciani behind him, hard, and drew his sword in one sweeping motion. “Get her!” he hissed to Senzei—and thank God, the man understood. He ran behind Damien—unarmed, the priest noticed, damn the luck!—to get hold of Ciani before she could recover herself. So that whatever power had taken control of her mind, it couldn’t force her back into the center of things.

Then the creatures were upon him, and as he swung the keen blade into them he felt himself giving ground, trying to retreat to some position that would keep the enemy from surrounding him. There were too many, they were too fast, and there was simply no cover in sight . . . bad, it was very bad. If he’d had more than an instant to think about it, the fear might have frozen his limbs; as it was, he channeled all his tension into his sword blade, and it struck his first opponent’s blade with enough power to force back the crude steel, so that his blade bit into flesh and the creature’s blood-dark purple, glisteningly unhuman—began to flow. But it was only a drop in a flood tide of violence, and he knew as he recovered his sword that were simply too many of them, that sooner or later they must surely overwhelm him—

And then, without warning, light filled the clearing. Cold light that blinded but did not illuminate—that washed the moonlit battlefield in a chill blue luminescence, whose presence seemed to intensify rather than drive back the shadows. Tarrant, he thought darkly, as he brought up his sword to defend himself from another blow. Must be. He dared to twist his head around for an instant—only an instant—and saw the tall figure standing with sword drawn beside him. The chill light came from that slender steel and was as blinding as a sun to look upon; Damien fell back as his vision was seared into near-uselessness, trusting to instinct rather than sight to fight for a moment of recovery. He saw the blazing unlight arc, heard it bite into the flesh of their nearest opponent. An icy wind whipped at his face, as if the blow itself were sucking the heat right out of him. And then two of the creatures were upon him—or was it three?—and the whole of his energy had to go to fighting them off. He felt the shock of a sword stroke reverberate against his own steel, tried to draw back into a parry that would defend against his second opponent—but they were too fast, there were too many of them, and he felt sharp steel bite into his arm, releasing a gush of warm blood down his shirt sleeve. Can’t do it, he thought despairingly—and, with bitter determination: Have to. He was aware of Senzei behind him, struggling to keep Ciani out of the line of battle. Both of them unarmed. Helpless. He saw Tarrant swing again by his side, saw the brilliant unlight cut into another one of the creatures. But: Not enough, he thought. He felt the cold bite of fear deep inside him as he swung again, forcing one of his opponents back. Trying not to open himself up to the others while he did so. Not enough!

And then, everything stopped. Suddenly. It was as if the air about them had suddenly become solid; as if both their bodies and their minds had been paralyzed. For a moment, there was no movement—not even thought—only the physical shock of forced immobility. Utter fear . . . and wonder.

At the far side of the road, a figure stood. The cold blue unlight hinted at a form that was human in shape, tightly bound in layers of cloth. Female. Though only her face was visible, and that was without expression, Damien was suddenly overcome by the sense that she was suffering—had suffered—would suffer endlessly, unless he helped. For one blind moment there was no armed enemy in his universe, no Tarrant, not even Senzei or Ciani: only this one strange figure, whose need for his help overwhelmed all his defensive instincts, drawing him forward . . .

And then the paralysis that gripped him shattered like breaking glass. He could hear Tarrant’s sharply drawn breath beside him, but he had no time to contemplate its cause—because they had turned toward her, all of them, and he could taste the hunger rising in them like some palpable thing, a tide of malevolence that made the bile rise in his throat. They were responding to the same image that he was, drawn by the woman’s utter vulnerability. But their instinct was not to defend, but to devour. Not to protect, but to rend. He saw them moving toward her and gripped his sword tightly, then lunged—and felt his sword tip thrust through the back of one of the creatures, just beside the spine. He forced the steel to shove through—blade horizontal, thrusting through ribs and flesh and out again through the chest, steel grating against bone as it passed. Then he jerked it out, hard, and prepared himself for a return assault. But there was none. The creatures were wholly fixated upon their prey, oblivious to all but their hunger and her helplessness. She had stepped back from the road now, into the limited shelter of the trees, and as the creatures moved forward to take her, as Damien moved forward to take them, he could almost see the power radiating forth from her, lancing forth to the moons and the stars and back again, a rainbow web of fae that shimmered about her like some translucent silk. Tidal fae, he thought in wonder, as he swung again. Targeting the head of one of the creatures. She’s Worked us all.

The full force of his moulinet smashed into the creature’s skull, shattering it in a cloud of blood and hair bits. The body of his victim went flying across the road, brains and bone shards spilling out across the feet of its fellows. It got their attention at last. The nearer one turned and looked at Damien—and blinked, like a man awakening from deep sleep. The priest thrust, but it was too late; the creature managed to dodge him, stumbling, and quickly backed away. He heard a muffled scream behind him, and the blood ran cold in his veins at the sound of it. Ciani? Where the hell was Senzei, and what was Tarrant doing? He didn’t dare take a moment to look. The woman’s spell was rapidly fading, and the creatures were but an instant away from attacking anew. He braced himself for a second onslaught—how many of them were there, now? Four? Five?—but to his surprise, they made no move toward him. He tried to advance and found himself suddenly dizzy; his left arm was warm and wet and becoming weak. How much blood had he lost? No matter. Against even odds he could stand his ground and parry, but against so many opponents he must press for any advantage, never let them regain the initiative . . .

They moved. Suddenly. Not toward him, as he had expected. Nor toward the strange woman, or even Ciani. Away. Their legs splattered with the blood of their fallen comrades, their feet treading on bits of bone . . . they ran. Bolted like animals into the brush. Damien moved to follow . . . and then stopped and drew in a deep breath. He fought the urge to look down at his arm and looked instead at the woman. She was still there, but the power surrounding her had faded; whatever she was, she was no longer Working.

Ciani!

He turned back toward the clearing, heart pounding. Toward a tableau that was as chilling as the one which he had just witnessed. Senzei lay on the ground, Half-stunned, his stomach and side drenched in blood; barely two feet away lay the body of the creature who must have gotten to him, now decapitated. There was another such creature on the far side of the tableau, similarly dispatched. Whatever else Tarrant’s sword might be, it was efficient enough in battle. But as for the man himself . . .

He stood in the center of the clearing, eyes blazing in hatred and defiance. In his right hand he still held the sword, and its chill glow made his pale flesh look like something long dead. And in his other arm . . . Ciani lay there, limp and unmoving, her one visible hand as white and as bloodless as ivory. Where he pressed her against him there was blood, and it trickled down from under her hair to his shirt sleeve as though binding them together. For an instant it was as if Damien could See the very power that linked them, and he stiffened as he recognized its nature. Hating, as he had never hated before.

“You bastard!” he hissed. “You were one of them all the time!”

The rage in Tarrant’s eyes was like a black fire, that sucked the very heat from Damien’s soul. “Don’t be a fool!” he whispered fiercely. The words came hard, as though he were struggling for speech. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

“You did what they did,” he said. Seeing the flow of power between them, sensing the new emptiness inside her. “You took her memories. Deny it!”

Tarrant shut his eyes for an instant, as if struggling with something inside himself. Damien gauged the distance between them, Ciani’s position, his own fading strength—and then the moment was gone, and the black gaze was fixed on him again. Shadowed, as if in pain.

“I became what she feared the most,” the man whispered. “Because that’s what I am.” He spoke the words as if he didn’t quite believe them himself, and as he looked down at Ciani he seemed to shudder. Senzei, behind him, began to stir weakly—and the look that Tarrant shot at him told Damien that not all of the man’s wounds had been imposed by the enemy.

“Tried to stop him,” Senzei gasped. “Tried . . .”

Slowly, Damien sheathed his sword. Pain pierced through his arm like fire, but he gritted his teeth and managed to ignore it. Ever aware of the hot blood that was dripping from his wounded arm, he snapped open the pouch affixed to his belt. Inside it, in a carefully padded interior, two special flasks lay side by side. One was silver, and now held most of the Church’s precious Fire—the Patriarch’s gift. The other, its original vial, was glass; if he threw it hard enough it would shatter on contact, and the moisture still clinging to its inner surface should be enough to burn the life from any nightborn demon.

“Don’t be a fool!” Tarrant hissed. He seemed to draw back—but whether in fear or in preparation for a Working, Damien couldn’t say.

“You claiming power over this as well?” He drew it out—and even as little moisture as remained in the fragile vial was enough to send beams of golden light lancing through the clearing. Tarrant breathed in sharply in pain as they struck him, but made no effort to escape them.

“You idiot . . . do you really think you can hurt me with that? I can blast the ground beneath your feet faster than you can move—or the air between us, before you can take a breath.”

“Give me Ciani,” Damien said coldly.

Tarrant winced. Seemed to be struggling within himself. At last he whispered, hoarsely, “You can’t help her now.”

“Give her to me!”

If he didn’t throw the flask then, it was because of the expression that came over the man’s face: so human, so strangely tormented, that for a moment he was too shaken to attack.

Tarrant’s voice was hoarse. “I vowed once that I would never hurt this woman. But when that woman’s Working hit, with the full force of the tidal fae behind it . . . it awakened a hunger too intense. I feed on vulnerability, priest—and she was too close. Too helpless. I lost control.”

“So much for your precious vow,” Damien growled.

Something flickered in those lightless eyes that was not rage or hatred. Pain? “The true cost of that is beyond your comprehension,” he whispered.

Damien took a step forward. The clearing spun dizzily about him. “Give her to me,” he demanded.

Tarrant shook his head, slowly. “You can’t help her,” he said. “Not without killing me.”

His fingers tightened on the flask. “Then we’ll just have to try that, won’t we?”

Gerald Tarrant tensed. He raised his sword overhead, a gesture more of display than of active aggression—and if Damien hesitated for an instant, it was in the hope that the man would let go of Ciani before he attacked. So that she would be out of danger. But then the blazing sword was suddenly thrust point downward into the earth, deep into the dirt between them—

And earth-fae met earth-fae in an explosion that rocked the entire ridge. The ground erupted toward Damien, a wall of dirt and shattered stone that hit him like a tidal wave. He was knocked to the ground with stunning force, half buried by the clumps of earth and gravel and rotting wood that the explosion had thrown at him. With a moan he tried to move, but the effort was too much; he tried to close his hand, to see if he still held the precious vial, but his fingers were numb and packed in earth, helpless to move. He made one last effort to get himself up, or at least to dislodge some portion of the debris that covered him . . . but it was too much, or else the blood loss was too much, or all of it was too much combined. He slid down slowly into darkness—and even the curse that might have accompanied his passing was muffled by the earth, and went unheard.

22

Dirt, plugging his nostrils.

Dirt filling his mouth and throat, mud-wet with blood. Pounds upon pounds of it, covering him over like grave—filling, burying him alive. He struggles, coughs, tries to take in air. Fights to free himself from the monstrous weight that pins him down—tries to turn over, or sit up, or even just raise up an arm, any sign of life—but the earth clings to him like an incubus, mud-fingers gripping his clothing, pulling him down . . .

“Damien.”

He pits all his strength against the weight of the earth above him and feels himself move at last, so that he can strike out at the fingers that clutch at him-

“Damien!”

Hundreds of them gripping his skin, holding him down. He strikes out with all his strength at the creature that must be out there, somewhere, whose hands dig so deeply into his flesh that it seems they must draw blood-

“Damien, you hit me once more, I’ll give it to you good. You understand me? Damien!”

He drew in a deep breath, slowly. No dirt. The hundreds of fingers became dozens, became ten. He opened one eye—the other seemed to be swollen shut—and studied a hazy outline that might or might not be Senzei.

“Thank the gods,” the sorcerer muttered. “You all right?”

It seemed that the words had miles to travel before they got to his mouth. “I . . .” He coughed heavily, and the dirt-filled mucus that clogged his throat loosened; the words came easier. “I think so. Where’s Ciani?”

“Gone.” Senzei’s face was coming into focus now—pale, bruised, hollowed by misery. “He took her.”

“Where?” He tried to sit up. Pain lanced through all his limbs and his head-especially his head-with such searing force that he fell back, gasping. “Where, Zen?”

“Take it easy.” There was another hand, now, smaller and gentler, and it laid a cool cloth against his brow. Damien snatched it away.

“Where, Zen?”

He hesitated. “The Forest is my guess. As good as any. She said he went north—”

He managed to get his other eye open; a second Senzei swam hazily in his vision. “Who said that?”

“The woman.”

“The one who . . .” He floundered for words.

“Yeah. That one.”

“Merciful God.” He raised up a hand to rub his temple, but the touch of flesh against flesh burned him like acid. “What happened, Zen? Tell me.”

The sorcerer reached out and took his hand, and gently put it down by his side. “Take a deep breath first.” Damien started to protest, then obeyed. He coughed raggedly. “Again.” The next one went down a bit easier. He took a few more voluntarily, until the flow of air seemed a bit more reliable.

Then he forced both eyes open and took a look around. It was a small room, windowless; Senzei was standing by the bed on one side, a plain, middle-aged woman was seated on the other. An older man in more formal clothing stood at the foot of the bed, scowling in disapproval. After seeing that Damien was both conscious and coherent, the latter figure stalked out.

“Tell me,” the priest whispered.

“After Tarrant-” Senzei drew in a shaky breath. “There was an explosion. Most of it went your way, I think. It must have knocked you out. It hit me, too, but not nearly as hard. I thought I saw a figure picking its way over the mounds of earth . . . it must have been him. I couldn’t see Ciani. No details. I passed out. No idea how long. When I came to again . . .” He bit his lower lip, remembering. “There was something on top of you. Feeding. The woman was pulling it back, twisting its neck so it would let go . . . it had scaled wings, and a tongue like a snake, and its mouth was dripping with blood . . . she snapped its head off. Just like that. And threw it over the edge, harbor-side. Then she . . . she dug the dirt out of your mouth, so you could breathe. And she took something out of her clothing and rubbed it on your arm, where the wound was. She did some other things—I couldn’t see clearly, I was barely conscious myself—and then she stood, and this . . . some kind of animal came to her, walking like a horse but it looked like something else, and it had two long horns, like rainbow glass . . .” He closed his eyes, remembering; his voice sank to a whisper. “I asked, where did he go? For a moment, she didn’t acknowledge me. Then she looked out toward the northlands, and pointed there. “Forest,” she said. “Where men devour men.” He coughed heavily. “Then she mounted and rode off. I tried to get to you, so I could help—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. The pain was so bad . . . I thought I was dying. Then the sun rose, and they came to help.”

“They?”

“From the inn. They’d heard the explosion.” He glanced at the woman, then away. His voice was bitter. “They waited till dawn before they went outside. Afraid for their precious skins. So we lay there without help till then. The sun rose, and they came outside and got us. They did what they could for our wounds. They gave us blood. You were delirious. It’s been hours . . .”

Damien tried to sit up. The room swirled around him, and blood pounded hotly in his temples . . . and he tried it again. And again. On the third try, he succeeded.

“We need to go,” he muttered.

Senzei nodded. No questions about why, or where. He understood. “You’re in bad shape,” he warned.

“How bad?”

“The doctor said you’d be out for days.”

“So much for that diagnosis. What else?”

“Blood loss, concussion, possible internal damage—he wasn’t sure on that last one, might have thrown it in just to cover all the bases. The wound in your arm seems to be closing up all right—whatever she put on it seems to have kept it from getting infected—but all the stitches in the world won’t keep it from opening up if you use it too much. And you’re bruised like all hells.”

“That’s par for the course,” he said. “What about you?”

Senzei hesitated. “Took a thrust in one side. Pretty ugly, very bloody, but nothing vital was hit. Or so it seems. Hurts like hell—but that goes without saying. The doctor said not to exert myself until it heals.”

Damien noted the stiffness with which he moved, the thickness about his middle where bandages were no doubt layered. “She didn’t do anything for you? The woman, I mean.”

Senzei looked away. “No,” he said softly. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot since it happened. At this point I’m not even sure she meant to save our lives. I mean, the timing was certainly fortunate, but it seems like a chancy way to enter a fight. I think she meant it as a kind of . . . test, maybe. To see what we would do. I think . . . she helped you because you tried to save her. Because that was your first instinct, when her Working hit.”

“So what was yours?” Damien asked quietly.

Senzei bit his lip. Shook his head. “Let’s not discuss it, all right? Few of us are as perfect as we’d like to be.”

Damien forced himself to look away. “All right. You’re hurt, I’m hurt . . . simple flesh wounds, maybe an infection or two. Nothing I can’t Heal.”

“Oh, yeah? Using what fae?”

Damien stared at him. And realized what he meant. “Shit.”

“I’ve been a Worker all my life, you know. Moved the toys near my crib without touching them, and all that. Now . . .” He wrapped his arms about himself and shivered. “It almost killed me in Kale. It’d be a thousand times worse here, this close to the Forest. I think I’d rather bleed.”

“We can’t wait for nature to heal us before we leave.”

“I know that,” he whispered.

Damien swung his legs over the side of the bed. The pounding in his head—and the pain—had subsided to a mere throbbing drumbeat. “He can only travel at night, right? It was well past midnight when he left here. Dawn came soon after that, and the sun’s still up. That means he got, what, three hours of travel time on us? We push hard, we’ve got him.” He looked at Senzei. “If we leave now.”

“All our things are packed,” Senzei said quietly.

“Can you make it?”

The sorcerer looked at him sharply. “Can you?”

“No question,” he said. “He’s got Ciani.”

Senzei nodded. “Same here.”

Damien drew in a deep breath, tried to gather his thoughts. “If we’re moving fast, we won’t want all the horses. We’ll keep three—two for us, one for backup. And for Ciani. Drop off some of the duplicate supplies in Mordreth, hopefully where we can get at them later . . . but if not, not. We strip down and travel fast. Get that son of a bitch before he knows what hit him.”

“You really think we can take him?”

“Oh, I’ve killed nastier things. None of them were quite so eloquent . . . but remember, we’re not playing by his rules this time. And I do have a weapon that’ll hurt him.” He reached for the padded pouch at his belt—and suddenly panicked, when he realized it wasn’t there. “Zen, they—”

“It’s here.” He reached to the side of the bed, where the pouch and its supporting belt lay coiled atop a small table. “They took it off you when they cleaned you up. I didn’t let it out of my sight.”

“Good man.” He opened the flap of the pouch, and saw both the silver flask and the crystal vial cushioned within. The latter had dirt encrusted in its delicately etched surface; he picked at it with a fingernail and muttered, “I’m surprised this survived.”

“You had it gripped so tightly it didn’t have a chance to get broken. Even in your delirium you wouldn’t let go; we had to pry it out of your fingers.”

Damien tried to fasten the belt around himself, but his wounded arm—swollen, stiff, and throbbing with pain—lacked the dexterity. Senzei helped him.

“You sure you can make it?”

Damien glared. “I have to. We both have to.” He patted the pouch into place over his hip, felt the outline of the flat silver flask within. “I guess if we’re going to leave the extra horses behind, we should try to sell them. We’ve been going through capital like water—”

“I sold three of them this morning,” Senzei told him. “Not a great price, but it covered the medical bills. And I gathered our things—what was left of them—and settled with the people here, for their time and supplies. And I found this.” He dropped a small golden object onto the bed beside Damien. It took the priest a moment to realize what it was.

“My God,” he whispered. He picked it up, and held it by the broken chain so that the earth-disk dangled before his eyes. Its reverse side, engraved with a delicate sigil, caught the light as it turned.

“I found it near where he’d been standing. She must have pulled it off him when he attacked her. Damned lucky accident, don’t you think?”

“Knowing Ciani, I would say . . . not an accident at all.” He imagined her in that last moment of terror, some precious particle of her mind clinging to sanity long enough to reason out what they might need, striking out in seeming chaos until his tunic front was torn open, until her fingers closed over the precious gold and pulled . . .

“What a woman,” he breathed. “Give me ten like that, and I could take an empire.”

Senzei forced a smile. “It’s getting hard enough just keeping track of one.”

Slowly, Damien eased himself forward. He braced both his hands against the edge of the bed—and paused for a minute, breathing heavily. Then he pushed upward, forcing his legs to bear the weight. Pain shot like fire up his left arm—but it was going to do that for quite some time, he might as well get used to it. After a moment, he managed to stand. A few seconds more, and the room stopped spinning. He managed a step. Two. The room was steady. The pain in his arm subsided to a stabbing throb.

“All right,” he said. He looked at Senzei. “Let’s do it.”

“And no more going unarmed,” he said harshly, as the ferry carried them across to Mordreth. “I want you with a weapon on you at all times. That means if you go behind the bushes to take a piss you have a sword in your hand when you do it. You go off to bed a woman, I want a sword on the pillow next to you. Got me?”

Senzei looked out over the water. “I guess I deserve that.”

“Damn right you do. It’s a miracle you didn’t get yourself killed out there. And miracles rarely repeat themselves.”

There were a number of small tables at the center of the ferry, a few of them occupied by travelers: eager merchants conversing over lists of merchandise, a group of laborers quickly bolting down sandwiches, a nursing mother. Damien found them a vacant table and pulled over two chairs for them.

“Let’s get to work.”

He spilled out a box of ammunition on the table between them, picked one bolt up and turned it about, thoughtfully. The short wooden shaft had a metal tip on one end, a curved band on the other. He took out his pocket knife and, with the tip, tried to pry off the two metal pieces. The tip came off easily. The band at the base was tight, and took some work.

“Wax,” he muttered. “Adhesive.”

Senzei rummaged through the pack that held their smaller supply items. After a few minutes he managed to find a small chunk of amber wax. The stick of glue took longer.

“Would there be any point in asking what you’re doing?”

“Preparing for war,” Damien muttered. “Watch and learn.”

He laid the naked shaft before him on the table, and rolled it over until he was satisfied with the placement of the grain. Then, carefully, he used his knife blade to split it open. It took little encouragement to get it to crack open along the grain, down the length of the shaft.

He looked about to see if anyone was watching. But the other passengers were perusing their own work at their own tables, or sitting on the long benches that flanked the staircase to the second level, casually chatting, or else standing at the rail that guarded the edge of the deck, watching the muddy green water course by.

He took the silver flask out of its pouch and carefully—reverently—opened it. And he dribbled a few precious drops down the exposed center of the wooden shaft, until the Fire was absorbed into the wood. The shaft glowed dully, like cooling charcoal.

“Now.” He capped the flask and put it beside him—carefully, oh so carefully—and took the glue from Senzei. The halves went together easily, with only a narrow scar where his knife had been applied. Next he briskly rubbed the wax onto the surface of the shaft, until the whole of it was coated. The metal tip and anchoring band he glued carefully back in place.

“There.” He set the finished product before him. It looked little different than the other bolts, and Senzei had to fight to keep himself from Working his sight to see if there was indeed a difference. The change would be visible enough when molecules of the Fire, seeping through the dry wood, reached the surface of the shaft. Maybe.

“You think it’ll work?”

“I think it can’t hurt to try. A few dozen drops of Fire at risk . . . and if it works, it gives us one hell of an arsenal.” He looked up at Senzei—and for an instant, just an instant, the sorcerer thought he saw a flicker of fear in the priest’s eyes. He felt his own throat tighten, knowing what it must take to cause such a thing.

You’re the brave one, Damien. If you give in . . . I don’t know if I can handle it.

“You okay?” the priest said quietly.

He met his eyes. And managed to shrug. “I’ll be all right.”

“There’s nearly two hours of daylight left. We should reach the Forest’s border by then. He can’t be too far ahead of us. If we can find a physical trail—”

“And what if we can’t?”

Damien forced his knife into the center of another shaft. The wood snapped apart with a sharp crack, into two nearly equal halves.

“Then I’ll have to Work to find one,” he said quietly. “Won’t I?”

Mordreth. It was a mining town, a gold rush town, a trapper’s camp . . . and all the worst elements of those things combined, with none of their redeeming features. It was a transitory camp somehow made permanent by sheer persistence on the shoreline, by the need for its dismal bars and rat-trap inns and cheap entertainment halls, as well as the manpower that was its most precious commodity. But if the inhabitants of Mordreth had any hunger for beauty, they clearly indulged it elsewhere. The place was gray: muddy gray along the water, dirty gray in the streets, weathered gray about the houses. The only color that existed in the town was in a few garish signs, a tattered line of pennants, and occasionally the undergarments that the whores wore as they gathered in the brothel windows, beckoning to passing strangers.

Damien and Senzei rode through the muddy streets at a rapid pace; the horses seemed as anxious as they were to get through the town quickly. The place had an aura of entrapment about it—as if by staying too long within its borders, one might lose the will to leave. By the time they reached the far side of the dingy settlement Senzei was shivering—and not from the cold.

“You really want to leave our supplies here?” he asked.

Damien shook his head grimly but said nothing.

They rode through a long stretch of flatlands, the only vegetation sparse patches of dead grass that reminded them how very close at hand winter was. The ground was hard, nearly frozen. Which was something to be grateful for, Damien pointed out; in another season, it might have been mud.

Senzei was beginning to understand why he had never traveled.

A few miles later they came upon the first signs of human life. A scrap of cloth, lying in a clump of dead grass. The shards of a packing crate, long since dismembered. A circle of stones, blackened by fire, and beside it the marks of a recent encampment. Damien glanced at the latter once but gave it no more notice; their quarry would not be camping.

They rode on. The sun dropped lower and lower in the west, the colors of dusk adding their own special tenor to that sullen, swollen star. Greenish-yellow light spilled across the landscape: skies before a storm. It was becoming easier to spot the artifacts on the ground around them now, outlined as they were by vivid black shadows. They came to a low rise, then another. And another. Shallow rises became rolling hills: the vanguard of a mountain range. How far north had they come?

Senzei watched it all pass by, clutching himself against the chill of nightfall. The pain in his side was growing worse and worse, each jolt of the horse on the uneven ground driving spears of fire deep into his flesh. He tried to ignore it, tried to overcome the faintness that threatened to overwhelm him, the grayness that had fogged all but the very center of his field of vision. Because they couldn’t afford to slow down, not for him. Slowing down meant losing Ciani. Taking time to heal now is as good as committing her to death, he told himself. And so he clung unsteadily to the saddle beneath him, and somehow managed to keep riding.

And then they came to it. Damien first, topping a particularly high rise. He pulled up suddenly, to the confusion of his mount. Senzei followed suit. The extra horse snorted in alarm and tried to break away, but their own two mounts were calm enough and a sharp jerk on the reins of the third served to discipline him for the moment.

They regarded their destination.

In the distance were trees. They began suddenly, a solid wall of brown and black and beige trunks jutting up from the half-frozen ground, overlaid by jagged branches and brown, dying leaves. The Forest. From their vantage point Senzei and Damien could see far into the distance, over the treetops to the mountains beyond. The Forest’s canopy stretched out for miles upon miles, a thick tangle of treetops and dead leaves and parasitic vines that smothered the entire region like some vast, rotting blanket. Here and there an evergreen peeked out, a hint of somber green struggling for sunlight. Yellow-green light washed over it all, sculpting the canopy with light and shadow so that it seemed like a second landscape, with hills and valleys and even meandering river beds all its own.

That was what caught their attention first, and held it for several long minutes. Then, when they had taken it in, their eyes traveled downward. Into the valley before them.

Where men were gathering.

They were camped just before the tree line, where the shallow earth had guaranteed that nothing but grass and simple brush would take root. Their encampments were crude and severe, functional rather than comfortable, and a sharp, ammoniac smell arose from the land they had claimed, as though some territorial beast had sprayed every tent in the place. There were several cabins—crudely built—and a structure that might have been meant to serve as outhouse, but otherwise the make-do shelters that dotted the landscape were transient structures of pole and canvas, unenduring. There were a few wooden frames with animal skins stretched across them, a few cooking fires, a single laundry line. And men. They were gathering at the foot of the hill, as though preparing to welcome the travelers—or challenge them. Damien glanced at Senzei, about to issue instructions—and then looked again, more closely, his eyes narrowing in concern. “You all right?”

Senzei managed a shrug. “I’ll live,” he muttered. And though that was all he said, they both understood what he meant; not I’m sure I’ll survive this, but rather, I understand our priorities. We have to keep moving. Don’t stop for me.

With a brief nod of approval, Damien started down the hill. He made no move for his weapon, but Senzei knew from experience just how quickly he could get to it if need be. He wished he had half the priest’s skill at combat; if a fight broke out here, he’d probably wind up skewered before he could get his own blade halfway out of its scabbard.

Say it right, he told himself. It wouldn’t be a fight. Not with two against this many. That’s called a slaughter.

The two slowed their horses as the locals gathered around them, until they were brought to a full stop at the base of the hill. The locals were all men, for the most part hardy types in their prime, functionally dressed. All were possessed of that particular hard expression that said, we don’t need strangers, or their questions. Justify your presence or get out of here, fast.

Damien rose up in his saddle; Senzei could feel the crowd tense. “We’re looking for someone,” the priest said. His voice was carried crisp and clear by the dry autumn air; a preacher’s voice, strong and unhesitating. “He would have come through just before dawn—a tall man, with a woman in tow.” He looked out over the sea of faces—neither hostile nor sympathetic, but coolly unresponsive— and added, “We’ll pay well for any information.”

There was a murmur at that, and several glares, passed between the men. One voice spoke up, openly hostile. “Yeah, we’ve seen one. A Lord of the Forest, that one. Came through like fire—untouchable, y’know? We don’t look, we don’t ask. Them’s the rules.”

Damien looked toward the source of the voice. “Did he have a woman with him?”

The men looked at each other; it was clear they were debating whether or not to answer Damien. “Think so,” one said at last. “Across his saddle?” “Yeah,” another confirmed. “I saw it.”

A man who was close to the horses stepped forward and tried to put his hand on Damien’s mount, in warning. The horse, well-trained, backed tensely away.

“You understand,” he said to Damien. “We’re not supposed to notice that kind. It’s death to interfere with ‘em.”

“Interference is my business,” Damien assured him. “You know where he went?”

“Listen to me,” another said. He, too, stepped forward, divorcing himself from the crowd. A middle-aged man, silver-haired, with dark weathered skin and a workman’s hands. “Three or four times a year, His people come through here like that. And right behind them, often as not, a herd of men comes galloping along in hot pursuit. Brothers and fathers, husbands, lovers—sometimes hired swords that were paid to fight alongside them—all of them determined that this time, this one time, the Hunter won’t get what He wants.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded Damien. “You hear what I’m saying? Men just like you two, with questions just like yours. Armed to the teeth and ready for anything. They think. So they ride into the Forest with a curse against the Hunter on their lips . . . and never come out again. Never. I’ve watched a dozen, two dozen go in . . . and not a single one ever showed his face on the outside again, in all the years that I’ve been here.”

Damien looked at Senzei; there was something cold in the priest’s expression that hadn’t been there a moment before, as if some terrible thought had just occurred to him. It took Senzei a minute to realize what it was—and when he did, he felt his hands tighten involuntarily on his reins, his heart skip a beat inside his chest. Was Ciani to be hunted? It was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to either of them. But if she was alive, and vulnerable, and the Hunter got hold of her—

“Where’s he headed?” Damien demanded. He turned to the silver-haired man. “You seem to know what goes on here. Where’s he gone? How do we follow him?”

The man just stared at him like he’d lost his mind. And maybe he had. At last he said quietly, “There’s a fortress in the heart of the Forest; they say it’s black as obsidian, impossible to make out in the shadows—unless He wants you to see it. That’s where He stays, the Hunter, and never leaves, except to feed. They’ll have taken her there.”

Damien looked the men over. “Have any of you ever seen this place?”

“No one’s seen it,” a man answered quickly. “No one that ever lived to talk about it. You hear me? If you go in there searching for Him—for any reason—you’ll never come out again. Not with the woman, or without her. Ever.”

“The Hunter’s merciless,” someone muttered. And another urged, “Give it up, man.”

“The Hunter can take his Forest and shove it,” Damien said sharply. “How do we get to this black fortress of his?”

They were silent for a moment, stunned by the force of the blasphemy. At last the silver-haired man said, “All roads lead to the Hunter’s keep. Go in deep enough—so the shadows can herd you along—and you’ll get there, all right. Whether you see it or not is another thing. But there’s no way back, after that,” he warned them. “Not by any path a living man can follow.”

Damien looked toward the Forest. Where the trees parted somewhat there was a well-worn trail. As he watched, a pair of men on horseback broke free of the Forest’s confines and cantered over toward where their fellows were gathered.

“You go in there,” Damien challenged. “And you come out again.”

“Sometimes not,” someone muttered. Damien heard whispered curses. A rugged man in a black wool jacket said harshly, “That’s because there’s stuff in there that’s worth that kind of risk. Plants that don’t grow anywhere else, that sorcerers want—animals that mutate so fast, each generation has a different coat. There’s a pack of white wolves in that Forest, belongs to the Hunter himself—you kill enough of them to make a man’s coat from he skins, I can point you to a buyer who’ll pay a small fortune for it. Yeah, we’ll risk going in. Because we know the rules. Do as you like in the daytime . . . but if you’re in the Forest after nightfall you’re His. Period. So we do it fast and clean. Mark ourselves a good trail. Get out before sunset.” He glanced nervously toward the edge of the Forest; a shudder seemed to pass trough his frame. “Not as easy as it sounds,” he muttered. “Not when you can’t see the sun. Not when the ace plays games with your mind.” “All right,” Damien said; clearly he’d heard enough, reached into his tunic front and drew out a small purse. He looked around, then threw it to the silver-haired man—who let it fall before him and made no move to pick it up. “Save your money,” he said. “It’s one thing in the Hunter’s eyes to trade a little gossip—and quite another sell His secrets for profit.” He glanced toward the ringe of the Forest and added soberly, “He reminds us that distinction, every now and then.” “Your choice,” Damien responded. He left the pouch where it was and began to ease his mount forward, Senzei moved to follow—but for a moment his legs wouldn’t move, and his hands were strangely numb. “Damien . . .” In his side the sharp pain had become an amorphous fire that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. “I can’t . . .”

The priest twisted in his saddle, studied his companion’s face. Senzei could imagine the things that were going through his mind: He’s weak. City-born. Never suffered a serious wound in his life, and now this. But no one can do a Healing here without losing his soul to the Forest. And if we stop to rest, even for an hour, that might cost Ciani her life.

“I’m fine,” Senzei managed. And when Damien kept staring at him, he added, “Really.”

After a moment, Damien nodded. He turned back toward the Forest, and kneed his horse into motion once more. Gritting his teeth from the strain of it, Senzei managed to get his body to obey him. Slowly, his horse moved to follow Damien’s. And the third in line, behind him, took its accustomed place behind his.

You’ll be all right, he told himself. You will. It’s a question of mind over matter. You can’t afford to be sick, therefore you will get well. Right?

But mind over matter—or any other conscious control of the flesh—required the fae. And for the first time in his life, Senzei was beginning to understand what it meant to do without that.

23

There were seven of them now, and they lay along the northern crest of Morgot, staring hatefully at the distant shore. One was wounded. Three had died. Of the original band that had traveled to Jaggonath, only one remained—and if he acted as the leader of the backup team that had met them in Morgot, it was because he alone had been there since the start of it.

They had a sorcerer! one whispered angrily.

The leader answered quietly: They are all sorcerers.

You know what I mean. That one-

It was that bitch from the plains, another interrupted. If she hadn’t interfered-

You should have killed that sorcerer-woman in Jaggonath, one of the newcomers accused. Then this wouldn’t have happened. None of it would have happened.

Yes, the leader said quietly. I agree.

So why didn’t you?

I had other orders, he answered simply.

But it was the same woman? a newcomer demanded. You’re sure of that?

Yes. Very sure. The disguise was good, but her mind still tastes the same. He licked his lips, remembering. So good, these human souls.

They stared out across the water. At Mordreth. Toward the Forest.

Are we going in after them? one asked nervously.

No need, another whispered. They will come out. They must come out. And we’ll kill them then, when they do.

And if the plains bitch interferes again?

One hissed angrily. Another clenched his hands into fists, as if readying himself for battle.

The plains bitch is gone. She refused to enter the Forest. I saw her arrange passage to the rakhlands; by now, she must be within the Canopy. I say . . . we deal with the humans when they leave the Forest. And kill the plainswoman later, when we pass through her own camp. He added, in a hungry whisper: She can serve as food, for the long journey home.

24

Just before they reached the tree line, Damien signaled for Senzei to stop. He had seen to it that they each were carrying a springbolt, disassembled. Now he removed his from its worn leather saddlepack and motioned for Senzei to do the same.

With quick, efficient motions he assembled both their weapons. Senzei’s was brand new, a gleaming, polished weapon that had been purchased for the journey. Damien’s was an older model, heavier about the grip, whose well-worn finish and blood-stained shaft spoke of much use, not all of it at projectile distance.

“Ever use one of these?” he asked Senzei.

“Arcade sports.” He said it apologetically—as if somewhere in his citybound upbringing he should have seen fit to practice on live targets.

“Same theory. Heavier weapon.” He eased his horse over, close enough that he could point to details. “It’ll hold two bolts; keep it loaded at all times. There’s the safety; make sure it’s on if the weapon’s cocked—which it will be, at all times.” He watched while Senzei hefted it up to eye level, left hand forward to hold the barrel ready. “Try it,” he directed. “That tree.”

He sighted carefully, and pulled the trigger. There was a snap as the upper spring was released, and the metal-tipped bolt shot out from the barrel. Straight toward the tree and almost into its bark; but it missed by an inch and whistled past the target, into the Forest’s darkness.

“Close enough,” Damien muttered. “We’ll put in some practice time when we get out of here.” Not if, Senzei noted; when. The man’s confidence was unbelievable. “You’ve got a blade on the barrel tip and some heavy brass on the shoulder piece; if anything comes in close, use it. If something’s coming at you, don’t even try to reload; it’s a fifty pound draw, you’d have to wind it back, and that takes too long.” He took the weapon from Senzei and forced it back to a cocked position with a single draw; the pulley mechanism meant to ease such a procedure spun silently below, as if in protest of his strength. “And here’s the special ammo.” He pulled a bolt out of his forward pocket—and whistled softly. “Look at that, will you?”

The bolt’s shaft was glowing. A soft light, that would have been all but invisible in the daytime—but with the darkness of the Forest looming up before them, and God knows what waiting there in the shadows . . . the effect of the Fire was clearly visible. A glow from within the heart of the shaft, resonating against the impermeable wax surface as if it chafed at its imprisonment.

“Gods of Erna,” Senzei whispered.

“This power was bound by the Church, for Church purposes.” Damien slipped two bolts into the loading chamber, saw that they were settled properly. “Please have the decency not to invoke other gods while using it.”

Senzei started to force a smile—then realized that Damien was deadly serious. He nodded and managed to take the weapon back. It was a heavy piece, almost more than he could lift. He didn’t remember that being the case when they had bought it. He must be losing strength rapidly . . .

“All right, then.” Damien’s voice was grim. “Now listen: if you see Tarrant, if you have an opening, you shoot to kill. No questions, no conversation. Got it?”

“What kills that kind?”

“Go for the heart. There’s leeway for error that way; leave the fancy targets to me.” He glanced at Senzei. “You ready?”

He wasn’t, he never would be—but he nodded, all the same. No other answer was possible.

With a last grim glance at the dying sun—now half-lost behind the horizon’s edge, powerless to aid them—Damien turned his horse toward the narrow path and led them into the Forest.

And night closed over them. Close-set trees, their upper branches intertwined, formed a thick canopy overhead that was reinforced by vines and dead foliage and gods alone knew what else, until no more than a mere hint of sunlight was capable of seeping through. By the time they had gone a few hundred yards into the Forest the road ahead of them was already lost in shadows, indistinguishable from the woods beyond. Senzei glanced back the way they had come and saw no more than a faint carmine glow at the place where the road left the Forest: the last vestige of sunlight, rapidly dying. But even that vision seemed to waver as though viewed through running water, or flawed glass. And though he could make out the road’s starting point—barely—it was impossible for him to focus on it. He wondered if even now they had lost the option of turning back. Would that part of the road still be there if they wanted to use it?

“Dark fae,” Damien muttered. “Makes sense.”

“What’s that?”

He indicated the trees that loomed over them, the thick canopy of vegetation overhead. “No direct sunlight ever reaches the ground here,” he whispered. “Think of what that means! Have you ever watched during the true night, how quickly the dark fae moves out into the open, how powerful it gets even in that limited time? A very hungry, very volatile power, that tends to manifest man’s darker urges. But here—imagine this place in the summer, when those branches are thick with leaves . . . my God! Morning, even high noon . . . no light would ever touch the ground then. The dark fae would live on, oblivious to sunrise, and it would grow, and it would manifest—”

“Damien.”

The priest twisted around to look at him; his horse nickered softly.

“If there’s no sunlight here,” Senzei said slowly, “or very little, anyway . . .”

He could see Damien’s hand tighten on the springbok’s grip. He thought he heard him curse.

“So Tarrant didn’t have to stop,” he whispered. “Damn him! We should have guessed that.” He reached into the pouch at his side and drew out the Patriarch’s crystal vial; in the gloom of the artificial night it glowed twice as brightly as before: a star in the measureless gloom. “We have a light, at least.” His voice was grim as he affixed the vial to his saddle. “And one the Hunter won’t like. That’s something, anyway.” But his voice was far from optimistic. Was he thinking what Senzei was—that with a whole day’s head start on them, Tarrant might have delivered Ciani to her destination already?

They rode. Not slowly, as they might have done if Ciani were with them. Not cautiously, by any measure. Ahead of them the light of the Fire etched out details of their road in sharp relief—and their horses’ hooves pounded quickly past, as the mounts choose the most solid ground with certain instinct. No doubt there were dangers out there for which they should be watching—but the need to reach Ciani as quickly as possible, to make up for the time lost in Morgot, overwhelmed any need for caution.

Senzei hungered for his Sight. He wanted to see the road ahead as it really was: dark earth seething with the violet hues of the night-fae, delicate tendrils of that hungry power reaching out like fingers to grasp at the horse’s hooves . . . and then curling back, burning up, turning to mist as the Fire’s light struck it. Or perhaps withdrawing into some secret place, to venture forth again when the threat had passed. Maybe somewhere in the distance, unseen, Senzei’s fears were already sculpting the dark fae, manifesting his uncertainty. How ancient the power must be here—and how sensitive, how deadly! He longed to see it on its own terms, to do battle with it directly. And for a moment—just a moment—the key to a Knowing was on his lips. He tasted the words . . . and then bit them back, forcing himself to swallow them. The currents had nearly dragged him under in Kale; here, in the Forest itself, he would be swept away to his death before he knew what hit him. And while even that might have tempted him once—to taste such power, even for an instant!—he had Ciani to think of. He hungered to cast himself into the black sun, drink in its power—but for now, it would have to rise without him.

The path they followed became less and less defined, a mere hint of direction as opposed to the well-worn road they had started out on. The light of the Fire fanned out before him, illuminating the road ahead. Despite the fact that no threats were visible, Senzei began to feel a prickling along the back of his neck. As if someone—or something—were watching. He glanced behind them as best he could, saw only darkness. The feeling persisted.

Not watching, exactly. Anticipating. Waiting. Instinctively he began to key a Knowing—and though he stopped himself after a single phrase, those few sounds were enough to unlock a fearsome Working. Currents of earth-fae roared past his ears like a flood; the force of it nearly knocked him from his saddle. He had to hold on for dear life as the currents battered him, enveloped him, attempted to drag him under . . . it was so deep, so very deep! How could there be so much power in one place? He tried to cry out—in panic, in warning, in an attempt to banish his Knowing—but the current was too strong, and too swift for him. In the instant it took him to focus on a portion of the fae, that portion swept past and was gone. And what replaced it was new and hungry, untamable, a force as inexorable as the tides or the winds, as powerful as a newborn tornado . . .

He managed to cry out. Somehow. Damien twisted back to look at him, his right hand raising the springbok to firing position, thumbing off the safety catch—and then something black and sinuous launched itself from a shadowed tree trunk, directly at him. He must have heard it coming—or seen its flight reflected in Senzei’s eyes—for he turned back even as its claws reached out for him and discharged the loaded weapon point-blank into its gut. Senzei felt the bolt strike home as if the flesh it tore through was his own, and he cried out in agony as the Fire began to consume him. Striking out at Damien in primal fury—and then being struck across the base of the skull with the brass butt of the springbolt, claws tearing loose from horse and saddle and spinning, spinning, down into the raging current . . .

“There are more!” he gasped. The bulk of his voice was lost in the flood; he prayed that Damien could hear him. The wounded beast was writhing in pain on the ground before them, and Senzei had to fight not to share its convulsions. Had to fight not to share its descent into death, as the Fire at last consumed it. “Others!” he managed. He fought against the pounding of the current and managed to bring up one arm. To point. He whispered the key to an Unseeing, desperately, as he fought to bring his own weapon up. To find enough strength to hold it, and pull the safety free.

He did so.

Just in time.

They came from the woods, silent and smooth as shadow. Their souls sang loudly of hunger and of hate, chords of death that reverberated along the current, making Senzei’s blood run cold. He braced the springbolt against his shoulder, praying for the strength to fire it. They had come up from the rear, which meant that Senzei had to turn to face them; Damien was behind him. All that was before him was the unmanned horse, rearing up in terror—or trying to, the reins didn’t quite allow it—and four dark, sleek shapes with eyes that burned purple and breath that stank of hate. He muttered the Unseeing once, twice, again, as he waited for them to come close enough that he could be certain of hitting his target. The roar of the flood subsided somewhat—enough that he could hear Damien shouting instructions, not enough that he could make them out. The hand that was holding the barrel shook slightly—from fear or weakness?—as he centered his sights on the leader of the pack, directly between its eyes. And fired. He heard the sharp snap of the springshot’s release, saw a spark of light shoot out from the barrel, heard the crack of bone as it struck home, a sudden burst of brilliance as the Fire took root in its victim . . . he forced himself not to watch, not to think, just to turn and aim again and listen for the click that meant the second bolt was safely engaged . . . and fire. Not as clean a shot as his first, but it struck one creature solidly in its hindquarter and sent it off screaming into the woods. That was two. He reached to his pocket for another pair of bolts, suddenly remembered Damien saying something about not reloading—and then one of the beasts was on him, claws digging into his horse’s flank, purple eyes burning with hunger. Without even thinking he rammed the point of the weapon into its face and felt the blade bite into flesh, the cold wash of its nightborn blood as it gushed out blackly over his hand. He fought not to vomit. His horse bucked, panicked by its pain, and for a moment it took everything he had not to fall off. When he at last got it to stand still again, he saw that the reins of the third horse had been snapped off from his saddle; dizzily he looked around, trying to see where it had gone.

“Back off!” Damien barked. The voice gave him a sense of direction, and purpose; he forced his mount a step backward, then two. In that two of the beasts were struggling with the riderless horse not far from where they stood, Senzei’s mount was happy to move as ordered. It surprised him for a moment that it didn’t just turn and run, overwhelmed by the experience. But Erna had bred its equines for transportation in some of the most dangerous parts of the human lands; any beast that gave way to blind fear would have been weeded out of the breeding stock long ago.

Damien pulled up beside him; his springbolt was cocked and raised and splattered with black blood. He aimed quickly and fired at the nearest of the creatures. The screaming horse reared up, nearly getting itself in the way of the shot—but then the bolt drove home in a sleek black throat, and one of the attackers was down.

Before he could turn to fire at the next one, the terrified horse kicked out; its tripart hoof took the last beast in the head, and sent it flying backward into a nearby tree. There was a sharp crack as it hit, and when its body struck the ground it was twisted oddly, and all its limbs were still.

Senzei reached out to catch the bridle of the free horse—too far, too hard, pain lanced through his side, forced him back in a sudden spasm of agony. The animal reared up, blood running from its legs and a wound in its neck, and then took off into the depths of the Forest, screaming in rage and pain. Senzei gasped, and held tightly to his saddle. The pain was like fire in his veins, the whole world was spinning about him . . . but at least the currents were invisible again. Powerless to claim him. Thank the gods for that.

“You okay?” Damien whispered. Senzei tried to find his voice, tried to make his mouth form words—and then a sudden screaming split the night to the west of them, a sound of equine terror and agony that came from just beyond the reach of their Firelight.

Wordlessly, Damien reloaded for both of them. There were long scratch marks across his knuckles, and crimson blood had welled up there in thick, parallel lines. He from that direction. And once the sun rose the river would mean safe refuge, should they need it.

If it ever rises again, Senzei thought. If we live long enough to see it happen.

They rode as fast as they dared, taking into account the stamina of the horses. Damien was very clear on that: to wear out their mounts in pursuit of Ciani so that they were left on foot in this haunted wilderness was as good as committing all three of them to death. The Fire cast a light just far enough ahead that if the road suddenly ended, or was blocked by some faeborn antagonist, they would have just enough time to pull up before riding smack into it. Barely.

Thus it was that Damien’s nerves were trigger-taut, and he pulled back on his reins the minute he saw a flicker of movement reflecting back at him from the endless tunnel that was their road. Senzei, some yards back, managed to follow suit without running into him—mostly because his mount had picked up on the fact that it was supposed to be doing whatever Damien’s horse did. Side by side they paused in the center of the barren path, trying to make out moving forms in the lightless shadows. Between their legs the horses stirred anxiously, no doubt remembering the clawed creatures that had come running out of the woods mere minutes—or hours?—ago.

And then the shape moved close enough to become visible. Human in its general form, but strangely hunched over; Damien raised his springbolt to eye level as he watched it stagger toward them. The shadowed form resolved into a true human shape, and as it entered the outer boundary of the Fire’s light it was possible to see that it staggered in exhaustion, and perhaps in pain. It came closer and lifted its head, its eyes half shut against the pain of so much light after the darkness of the road.

Ciani.

Senzei felt his heart skip a beat, and adrenaline poured into his bloodstream like a tidal wave: from fear, from joy, from concern for her life. She was a mere shadow of her former self, dressed in tattered remnants of her traveling attire. Blood pooled beneath her bare feet as she came to a stop, swaying weakly, and she shielded her eyes with her hand so that she might see them against the Fire’s glare. A whisper barely escaped her lips, too fragile a sound to cross the distance between them. A name, perhaps. A plea. There were bruises about her face and arms, and long scratch marks on one side of her face. She seemed to have lost half her weight overnight, and most of her color with it. “Thank god,” she whispered. “I heard the horses . . .” Tears choked her voice and she took a step forward—then fell, her legs too weak to support her. Tears poured down her face. “Damien—Senzei—my god, I can’t believe I’ve found you . . .”

The sense of shock which had frozen Senzei’s limbs released him at last. With a cry of joy he slid off his horse—and his wound stabbed into him like fire, like a blade of molten steel, but what did that matter? They had found her!—and he ran toward her as best he could, his legs weak and shaking and stiff from hours in the saddle—

And something whizzed past his ear. A bolt of light—a spear of fire—a searing bullet, that left the air hot where it passed. He barely had time to recognize what it was, what it must be, before it struck her. The glowing bolt hit her square in the chest, slightly right of center: through the heart. With a scream, she ceased reaching for him and clutched at the projectile—so close, she had been so close, he had almost touched her!—but it was buried deep within her flesh, and she couldn’t pull it out. And then, without warning, she ignited. The whole of her body went up in an instant, like dry leaves sparked by heat lightning. Senzei cried out as he shielded his eyes against the glare of her burning, fell to his knees as the pyre roared up before him. Tongues of Fire licked at the canopy far overhead, and small black shapes fell—screaming, smoking—onto the road. Only slowly did it sink into him what had happened. Only slowly did it sink in what Damien had done. And why.

As the Fire died down at last—leaving no bones to mark the place where Ciani had stood, nor even any ash, only a faint smell of sulfur—he looked up to where Damien sat, one hand on the reins of Senzei’s horse and the other still bracing the springbolt against his shoulder.

“How?” he gasped. His whole body was shaking. “How did you know?”

The priest’s expression was grim, his face deeply lined.

It seemed he had aged a decade in the past few hours. “She wouldn’t come into the light,” he said. “Ciani would have known that the Fire meant safety for her, and come to it at any cost. She invoked my god, not hers. She called you by your formal name—which she’s never done before, at least not in my presence. Do you want more?”

“But you weren’t sure!” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t possibly be sure! And what if you were wrong?”

“But I wasn’t, was I?” His face was like stone, his tone implacable. “You’d better learn this now, Zen. Some of the things that the darkness spawns can take on any form they like. They read your fears from the fae that surrounds you and design whatever image they need to break through your defenses. And you only get one chance to recognize them, one chance to react. If you’re wrong—or if you hesitate, even for an instant—they’ll do worse then kill you.” He looked off into the darkness; Senzei thought he saw him shiver. “Compared to some of what I’ve seen, death would be a mercy.”

The Fire had died down. Senzei stared at where it had been, heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears. Why did it suddenly seem so hot? Had the Fire somehow affected his perception, so that even after it was gone something inside him continued to burn? He felt overwhelmed. He wanted to cry out, I can’t make it! I’m out of strength! How can I do anything to save her, like this?

Damien said nothing, allowing Senzei the time to pull himself together. Then, suddenly, he stiffened. In a voice that was quiet but firm, he ordered, “Mount up. Now.”

Senzei looked at him, saw him reloading the springbolt. The priest’s eyes were turned to the west, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. “Mount up!” he hissed.

Shaking, Senzei obeyed. Pain speared through his side as he slid into the saddle and he thought, I can’t do this again. If I get down again, I won’t be able to get up.

And there was peace in that thought. A dark kind of peace, in knowing that soon all fighting might be over.

He took the reins of his horse from Damien and followed the priest’s gaze, slightly ahead and to the left of the road. There were two points of light that winked at them out of the darkness, set a yard or so above the ground. Bright crimson, like blood.

“Let’s move,” Damien muttered.

They rode. At first slowly, watching the lights as they went. Then more quickly, when they saw that the crimson sparks were keeping pace with them. Soon after, another pair of lights joined the first. Then a third.

Eyes, Senzei thought, reflecting the Firelight. Gods help us.

They broke into a fevered gallop.

The eyes stayed with them.

There were more and more of them now, too many to count. They would flash bright as stars as their owners turned to assess their prey, then become invisible a moment later as the beasts turned their attention to the ground underfoot, or the Forest ahead. Whatever manner of creature they were, they were swift and seemingly tireless. Try as they might, the travelers couldn’t lose them. Senzei heard Damien curse under his breath, knew that he hated to drive the horses this hard for any length of time—but no matter how fast they rode, the gleaming eyes managed to keep pace with them.

Finally Damien slowed, and Senzei did the same. His horse was covered with sweat, and it shivered as the chill night air gusted over it. He was suddenly acutely aware of how desperately they needed these animals, of how little good it would do them to get where they were going—even to rescue Ciani—if they had to walk back through this place. We wouldn’t last an hour.

Damien lifted his springshot to eye level and cursed, “Damn them!”

“What?”

“They’re just beyond firing range. Exactly the right distance. Damn! It means they’re either hellishly lucky . . .”

He lowered his weapon. “Or experienced,” he said quietly.

Senzei whispered, “Or intelligent.”

There was a moment of silence. “Let’s hope not,” he said at last.

Something stepped out into the road.

It looked like a wolf, at first—an unusually large wolf, with bleached white fur and blazing red eyes. But there were differences. In its paws, which were splayed out like human hands. In its jaws, which were broader and more powerful than even a wolfs should be. And in its bearing, which hinted at more than mere hunger: a subtle malevolence, not at all bestial.

It moved to the center of the road and stood there, as if challenging them to ride over it.

Damien moved. His mount, responsive to his needs, broke into a sudden gallop. Despite his misgivings Senzei followed suit. The priest charged directly at the wolflike beast, as if daring it to stand its ground. But its only response was a low snarl and a twitch of its lips: a mockery of human laughter.

Then, when he was almost upon the beast, Damien veered off toward the right. Off the path. The move sent them toward the river, and their horses were forced to make their way through thicker and thicker brush. Damien’s mount stumbled once but managed to stay on its feet. After they had ridden parallel to the river for some distance the priest turned west again; Senzei realized that he was hoping to circle around the pack, and regain the road. But as they went farther west, they saw that the eyes were already there, waiting for them. Arrayed at an angle that seemed just a shade too calculated, as though they meant for the pair of them to reach the road at one particular point.

Herding us, Senzei despaired. Evidently the same thought had occurred to Damien; with sudden determination he pulled his sword free of its sheath and made ready to hack his way through their line. Senzei clutched his springshot to his chest and tried to pray. He wondered if Damien was praying as well—and whether the priest thought his prayers would be answered, or used them only to discipline his mind.

They broke from the trees, back onto the road. At least a dozen animals were arrayed before them, red eyes gleaming hotly; each of them was clearly capable of taking a man and a horse to the ground, and enjoying the fight.

And then Damien pulled up short, and motioned for Senzei to do the same. Confused, he did so.

In the middle of the road, poised tensely before them, was a man.

He was thin and lanky, with hair the same bleached color as the animals’ fur and skin that was nearly as white. He had red eyes that reflected the Firelight like crimson jewels. His skin was thin, translucent—so much so that it was possible to see the veins throb in his neck, deep blue veins running down into a white silk collar. He wore a white shirt and sleeveless jacket, white leggings, white leather boots. As if he, being albino, would only wear such animal produce as came from beasts that shared his affliction.

He smiled, displaying needle-sharp teeth. One of the beasts moved to his side; its claws flexed as it waited.

Too many, he despaired. How can we fight that many?

Apparently, Damien thought the same thing. He didn’t sheathe his sword, but he lowered it. With his other hand he reached into his pocket, and drew out the golden earth-disk.

The man grinned, a bestial expression. In a voice that was half hiss, half laughter, he challenged Damien: “You claim to be a servant of the Hunter?”

“I’m looking for one of his people.”

“Then you’re brave, sun-man. Or stupid. Or both.” He squinted toward the Fire. “Put that thing away.”

Damien hesitated. “Light a torch,” he ordered. It took Senzei a moment to realize that he was talking to him. He fumbled in one of his packs for a brush torch and matches. Finally he found them. And managed to get the thing lit. His hands, and therefore the light, shook badly.

Damien slid the crystal flask out of his belt and into the neck of his shirt. The Firelight faded, replaced by Senzei’s flickering orange flame.

“Much better.” More of the beasts had come onto the road; Senzei could feel his horse trembling, anxious to flee the smell of danger. “It hurts the eyes.”

“I’m looking for Gerald Tarrant,” Damien told him.

“Yes. He knows that.”

“You know where he is?”

The thin man shrugged. “In the keep. The Hunter’s warren. Where he belongs.”

“And the woman he had with him?”

The red eyes sparkled. “I don’t keep track of the Hunter’s women.”

Damien tensed; for a minute Senzei thought that his rage would get the better of him and he would attack the man. He looked at the two dozen animals waiting to take them, and despair filled him. Prepare to die, he thought, and he gripped his weapon even more tightly.

But Damien didn’t attack. Instead he said coldly, “You’ll take us to him.”

Something flashed in the albino’s eyes. Irritation? Anger? One of the white wolves growled. But then he answered, in a voice as smooth as silk, “It is what I came to do.”

He looked to the south, where the road behind them was swallowed up by darkness. For a moment it seemed that his eyes gave off a light of their own, a crimson far more brilliant than mere reflection could account for. He whispered something into the air—a Working?—and then waited. After a moment, a pounding could be heard in the distance. Rhythmic. Familiar. Horses’ hooves? Senzei wished that Damien was facing him, so that he might read his expression. But the priest refused to be distracted, and kept his eyes fixed on the albino sorcerer. When a horse broke into their circle of light and galloped past them, he didn’t turn. Not even Senzei’s horrified gasp was enough to bring him about, although his body went rigid in anticipation when he heard it.

It was their horse. The one they had left behind, the one that Damien had killed. Now it was drained of all its color as surely as it had been drained of life. Thin rivers of blue coursed down its hide where red blood once had spilled. Its eyes were empty, unfocused, its expression unresponsive. And from its belly—

Senzei fought the urge to gag, succeeded only because there was nothing left in him to bring up. Or no strength left in him to vomit. Out of the horse’s belly hung the tail ends of the worm-creatures, which writhed from side to side as their forward halves, buried within the beast, sought out choice morsels of horse flesh.

The white man swung himself up onto the ghastly animal. One of the worm-ends, responding to his proximity, wrapped itself around his ankle—and then snapped back suddenly, as if burned. After a moment, it shuddered and went limp. The rider grinned.

“Since you will not be driven,” he hissed, “then you must be led. Yes?” He kneed the gruesome mount into motion, one hand tangled in its death-bleached mane. “Follow me.”

And he laughed softly—a silken, malevolent sound. “I believe the Hunter is expecting you.”

25

I’m going to kill him, Damien thought.

It wasn’t anyone in particular that he meant, so much as a general desire to strike out at the source of his frustration. The Hunter would serve. So would the courteously arrogant Gerald Tarrant. Even this albino henchman of the Hunter would do nicely—although if it came down to trying to unhorse him in combat, Damien didn’t know if he could bring himself to kill the same animal twice.

But he was checked in his rage by a single thought, which echoed in his soul with unaccustomed power. Ciani. She was still alive. He sensed it. If he gave in to his fury, and by doing so caused her to suffer more . . . no. It was unthinkable. Alone, he could have risked such action. God knows, his sword had gotten him out of worse situations than this. But now he was traveling with others and was responsible for their well-being. It was an unaccustomed burden, and sometimes it chafed as sorely as manacles. It would have been far, far easier to deal with this situation if he were alone.

But let’s be honest, shall we? If it wasn’t for the others you wouldn’t be here in the first place.

He twisted back in his saddle to take a look at Senzei, who was following somewhat behind him. The man was flushed with fever, and the bruise on his forehead shone livid purple in the flickering torchlight. His hand on the reins trembled slightly—not from fear, Damien suspected, so much as from weakness. He looked bad, in the ways that Damien had come to recognize as life-threatening. He should never have let him come this far. But what other choices had they had, realistically speaking? Should Senzei have remained behind in Morgot so that the rakh-creatures could make a second attempt to kill him? Or stopped for a rest in mid-Forest, in the hope that a doctor would just happen by? Damien wished he dared to Heal his companion, or even do a Numbing. That was the most frustrating part of all of this: riding through a land of such incredible raw power, and being unable to Work it to save the ones he cared about. But he remembered Senzei on the roof of the hotel in Kale, trying to throw himself over the edge in order to embrace something he later described as a “black sun.” If the current had been that bad there, then Working it this close to the center of the whirlpool would be tantamount to suicide.

I’d do it, Damien thought grimly. I thought I could Heal him before it got me, I’d do it in a second.

They reached the base of yet another steep incline; Damien felt his horse shudder in exhaustion. And for the first time all night he felt a touch of true despair. All of his assorted skills couldn’t save them if his mount gave out; they might free Ciani and even manage to heal Senzei, but without horses they would never make it out of the Forest alive.

The trail switchbacked several times, growing steeper and steeper as they went. They were near the mountains, then. Perhaps even among them; it was impossible to gain any sense of their true position with the canopy overhead, and the endless exhausting miles behind them. He patted his horse firmly on the neck and heard it nicker in response. They had been through worse together. They would get through this. Senzei’s mount, on the other hand, was city-trained; Damien wondered how much longer it would last.

And then they came around a turn and it was there before them: a soaring edifice of black volcanic glass that broke through the canopy high above and laid bare the night sky beyond it. Prima’s silver-blue crescent crowned the central tower like a halo, and cold moonlight shivered down the glassy stone walls like gleaming mercury, caught in the streaks and whorls of the obsidian brickwork. It was surreal. Breathtakingly beautiful. And, to Damien, disturbingly familiar.

Where had he seen it before? He tried to pin down the memory, but nothing would come. Maybe it wasn’t the castle itself that he remembered. Maybe just something like it.

Something like the Hunter’s keep?

They rode into the courtyard and for a moment simply sat still on their horses, stunned by what was before them. The volcanic glass of the castle’s facade reflected their torchlight back in pools and arcs that shimmered across the brickwork like living things. Finials rose like tiny black flames from the tips of sweeping arches, and a tracery of fine black stone guarded narrow windows that reached up toward the moonlight. Revivalist, Damien observed. The pinnacle of that style. And for the first time in his life, he understood what the allure of the period must have been.

Dear God. What must this place be like in the sunlight? He stared at the perpendicular windows, wondering if the dawn would reveal patterns of tinted glass. And again, a sense of familiarity flickered in the back of his mind.

Where do I know this building from?

The albino had dismounted, and he came to where Damien and Senzei’s horses stood. He waited. After a moment Damien dismounted, careful to favor his wounded arm. And Senzei did so also—or tried to. Fortunately, Damien was close by, and he was at Senzei’s side the instant he began to fall. He caught him about the chest and helped lower him to the ground, until his feet were steady beneath him and it seemed that he could stand unaided. His flesh was distressingly hot, and it burned like fire even through the fabric of his shirt. He needs rest, Damien thought grimly. He needs a Healer. But how likely are we to get either one of those, in this place?

Shadows came at them from one of the archways—human-shaped figures swathed in black, that reached out to take their mounts. A muttered warning from Damien was enough to cause them to draw back, long enough for him to remove their more valuable possessions from his and Senzei’s horses. God alone knew if they would see the animals again. He patted his horse one last time to calm it, then gave its reins over to the black-cloaked men. Senzei’s they simply took, assuming—rightly so—that the wounded sorcerer had neither the strength nor the will to oppose them.

Side by side, the travelers entered the Hunter’s keep. Black volcanic glass gave way to black numarble, streaked with random bits of crimson. In the light of Senzei’s torch, it made the floor look bloodstained. The furniture was black as well, heavy novebony pieces that were as intricately worked as the building’s facade, cushioned in jet black velvet. Red silk tassels and fine red fringe edged black velveteen draperies, fixed permanently shut over the high arched windows. There were bits of gold visible here and there—drawer handles, locks, opulent doorknobs—but the dramatic darkness of the castle’s interior was only intensified further by the contrast.

At last they came to a door at which the albino paused. “You can wait here if you like,” he said. “I think you’ll find this room . . .” He grinned. “Comforting?”

He pushed the door open. For a moment, Damien could see nothing. Then the torch that Senzei was holding began to pick out details of the furnishings within—

And he stepped inside, motioning for Senzei to follow him. Not quite believing what he saw. Not knowing how to react to it.

It was a chapel. A room dedicated to the God of his faith, outfitted in the Revivalist style. No black stone here, nor any hint of visual blasphemy; the place might have been lifted out of Jaggonath a thousand years ago, and set down here without a single alteration. Which was, simply . . .

Impossible. Damien walked to the altar, let his fingers brush against the fine silk damask that covered it. He hungered to be able to Work, to Know for himself that this was indeed what it appeared to be, that no subtle malevolence was at work here, defiling the very patterns of his faith. But even in such a place as this he dared not use the fae. Especially in such a place as this, he told himself.

There were oil lamps flanking the door, and the albino lit them. “No need for open fire,” he said, and he pried the torch carefully out of Senzei’s fingers. Holding it at a distance as if in distaste, he turned to Damien. And smiled, clearly amused by the priest’s reaction.

“His Excellency is a religious man,” he said. As if that would answer all their questions. “I’ll tell him you’re here. Please feel free to make yourselves at home here . . . if you think you can.”

He turned to leave, but Damien stepped forward quickly and caught him by the arm. His body was as chill as ice, and the scent of his flesh was like carrion—but that might be just a perceptual Working meant to discourage physical contact, and Damien held on.

“His Excellency?” the priest asked tensely. “You mean the Hunter?”

“He prefers his Revivalist title,” the albino said. He closed a hand over Damien’s own—cold, so cold—and then pulled it off his arm. “Your people knew him as the Neocount of Merentha. He prefers Revivalist custom in general, I might add. You would do well to indulge him.” Lamplight glinted off the points of his teeth as he grinned: a ferocious expression. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to find out that you made it here.”

He left them. Shutting the door firmly behind him, as if by leaving it open he might contaminate the rest of the keep. Senzei looked at Damien—and found him leaning against the altar for support, his face as pale as a ghost’s.

“Merentha Castle,” he whispered. “It’s a copy. That’s why—oh, my God . . .”

His hand on the altar clenched, catching up a fold of damask and crushing it. “Zen . . . do you understand? Do you know who the Neocount of Merentha was?”

“I know he was one of the figureheads of the Revival. A strategist of Cannon’s, yes? A supporter of your Church—”

“A supporter? My God, he wrote half our bible. More than half! His signature is on nearly every holy book we have. The dream that we serve is his, Zen. His!”

Senzei looked confused. “What about your Prophet?”

“He is the Prophet. Don’t you understand? That was the name that they gave to him, when . . .” He shut his eyes; a shiver ran through his frame. “A name for the first part of his life. The time when he served God and man, and designed a faith that he believed could tame the fae, if only humanity would accept it. How could we follow in his footsteps without recognizing the source of our inspiration? But the Church didn’t dare use his name, because that might have invoked something of his spirit. They struck it from the books. And after . . . after . . .”

He turned away. He didn’t want Senzei to see the tears that were coming. He might misread their source, assuming weakness—when in fact they were tears of rage. “He was an adept,” he whispered hoarsely. “One of the first. And the premier knight of my Order. One day he . . . snapped. We don’t know what caused it. We’re not even sure exactly what happened. But those who searched through Merentha Castle after his disappearance found the remains of his family, gruesomely slaughtered. Apparently he . . . vivisected his wife. His children.” He turned back to Senzei. “You have to understand,” he whispered urgently. “In our tradition, there is no greater evil. Because he was, before he fell, all that we venerate. All that we strive to become. And then he threw it all away! In an act of such brutal inhumanity that there could be no question that he had damned his soul forever . . .”

“And no one knew where he went, after that?”

“They thought he died! They thought that hell had claimed him. And of course, yes—there were rumors. There always will be, after something like that. His brothers died in violent accidents, and he was blamed. His fiercest rival was found with his throat torn out, and of course it wasn’t mere animals that had done it. The ghost of the Neocount was given credit for at least a hundred crimes—but there never was any proof, not for any of it. And when several lifetimes had passed since his disappearance, it was reasonable to assume him dead. Mortality is the one constant of human existence.” He shook his head in amazement, and struck his fist against the altar top; a candelabra trembled. “It’s been almost ten centuries, Zen. Ten centuries! How can a human being live that long?”

“Maybe,” the sorcerer said nervously, “by becoming something that’s no longer human.”

Damien stared at him.

And the door swung open.

It was the albino. His red eyes took in the picture, and he smiled. It was a faint, fleeting expression that barely touched the edges of his lips; the eloquent minimalism of it reminded Damien of the Hunter’s other servant, Gerald Tarrant.

“He’s ready for you,” the albino told them. And he gave them a moment of silence in which to realize that he wasn’t going to ask them if they, too, were ready. Because they couldn’t possibly be. The Hunter knew that.

“Follow me,” he said—and though his heart was cold as ice, Damien obeyed.

They walked through halls of gleaming black numarble, past tapestries of black and crimson silk, over rugs so dark that only their texture made them visible: velvet black against the glistening mottled stonework of the floor. Though candles set in golden sconces along the wall had been lit some time ago, the cold stone sucked in their light as soon as it was cast. The albino sorcerer, with his white hair and clothing, seemed to glow like a torch by contrast.

And then they came to a pair of novebony doors, and the albino stopped. With a grin he pushed against the heavily carved surfaces—panels of hunting scenes, battle scenes, the Dance of Death—and announced, “The Neocount of Merentha.”

Beyond the door was an audience chamber, whose vaulted ceiling and decorative arches all drew the eye to the center of the room and the man who waited there to receive them. Haughty, arrogant, he wore the robes of an earlier age: delicate silks in graduated layers, the longest of them sweeping the ground about his feet. And on his shoulders, a broad collar of beaten gold, worked in a pattern of overlapping flames: the mark of Damien’s Order.

For a moment, rage nearly got the better of Damien. He thought of the weapons at his disposal—the Fire, the springbolt, the clean steel edge of his sword—and only with effort did he keep his hands from going for one of those tools. Only with a supreme act of will did he keep himself from succumbing to a fury so dark and terrible that it seemed he must give vent to it or burst. But he was not so blinded by anger that he lost sight of the power of the man who faced him, or the vulnerability of his own position. Not to mention—as always—Senzei and Ciani.

Hands shaking, thoughts reeling, he somehow managed to find his voice. “You vulking bastard . . .”

Gerald Tarrant chuckled. “The soul of courtesy, as always. You surprise me, priest. I would think that the premier of your Order deserved more respect.”

“You’re no servant of the Church!”

“Oh, I am that. More than you could possibly understand.”

“Where’s Ciani?” Senzei demanded.

The Hunter’s expression darkened. “Safe. For now. You needn’t worry about her. There’s no place on Erna safer for her to be right now than here.”

“I doubt that,” Damien said coldly.

Tarrant’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll get the lady back. Healthy and fit and full of all the memories that I inadvertently drained from her. It was to restore those to her that I brought her here. And the three of you will go to the rakhlands, just as you planned. In addition, your chance of success has increased considerably—because I will be going with you.”

“Like hell you are!”

The pale eyes glittered. “Exactly.” And before either of the men could respond he added, “I see that I’ve failed to communicate a vital point. You have no choice.” He paused; an expression flitted across his face that was strangely vulnerable—and then, just as quickly, it was gone. “I, too, have no choice,” he said softly.

“You expect us to trust you? After what you did to Ciani?”

“Because of what I did to Ciani.” His expression was strained, his manner tense. Damien cursed his inability to read the man. “You would be fools not to have me. You realized that in Kale, when you thought I was merely an adept. Is it any less true now?”

“We don’t need your kind of help,” the priest spat.

“On the contrary—it’s exactly what you need. A mind not so blinded by dreams of vengeance that it will fail to ask the right questions. As you have failed, priest—you, and your friend.”

“Such as?”

The silver eyes fixed on him. “Why has the lady lost her adeptitude?”

For a moment the silence in the chamber was absolute; so much so that Damien could hear the slow sizzle of wax from one of the room’s few candles. Then Tarrant continued. “Adeptitude isn’t a learned skill. It’s inborn. Inseparable from the flesh. A woman like Ciani could no more forget how to interact with the fae than she could forget to breathe, or think. Yet that’s precisely what happened. I question how. You believe that her assailants were constructs of the fae that sustain themselves by feeding on human memory. But the worst part of what was done to her had nothing to do with memory, and everything to do with power.” He paused, giving that thought a moment to sink in. “Which means one of two things. Either these creatures aren’t what they appear to be . . . or they’re allied to something else. Something far more dangerous and complex. Something powerful enough to—”

He stopped as Senzei moaned softly; he turned toward the sorcerer, and his expression darkened. Damien turned to his friend, just in time to see him crumple to the floor. Quickly he moved to his side, careful to place his bulk between the two men, protecting Senzei. With one hand he pulled open his collar, with the other he tested his forehead for fever. The flushed skin burned like fire, an ominous heat. Senzei’s eyes were open, but glazed and expressionless; his mouthed opened and closed soundlessly, shaping a whisper.

“The scent of death is on him,” the Hunter said quietly.

“I’m surprised you can make it out in this place.” Damien felt his hands shaking as he felt for his friend’s pulse—weak and rapid, like the heartbeat of a frightened bird—and knew that he was going to have to Heal him. Here. Now. It was that or let him die.

I should never have let you go on this long, he thought grimly. Forgive me. And then the hardest admission of all, one he rarely made: I was afraid . . .

Senzei gasped. A broken voice forced its way through his swollen throat. “Sorry . . .”

“It’s all right,” the priest said quietly. “It’s going to be all right.” If it has to be done, so be it. His heart was cold, as if the chill of the Forest had already invaded his flesh. He began to draw inside himself, to gather his consciousness in preparation for Working—when Tarrant’s presence stabbed into him like a knife, breaking his concentration.

“You can’t Heal him,” the Hunter warned. “Not here.”

Damien stood and faced him. The fear inside him gave way to rage; his hands balled into fists at his side as he demanded, “What the hell do you suggest? That I just let him die? Is that what you want?”

“I’ll deal with him,” the Hunter said calmly.

For a moment Damien just stared at him, speechless. “You’re telling me you can Heal?”

“Not at all. But that isn’t the skill your friend requires right now.”

He began to move toward the fallen sorcerer, clearly intending to Work him—but Damien grabbed him by the tunic front and forced him back, all his anger transmuted into sudden strength.

“You stay away from him!” he spat. “I’ve had enough of your Workings—and so has he. You think I’ll let you do to him what you did to that boy?” He shook his head angrily. “I only make a mistake once, Hunter.”

Something flashed in Tarrant’s eyes, an emotion so human that Damien had no trouble at all interpreting it. Hatred—unbridled, undisguised. The honesty of it was strangely refreshing.

“You will trust me, priest.” His voice was a mere whisper, but the power behind it was deafening. Ripples of earth-fae carried the words deep into Damien’s brain, adhered their meaning to his flesh. “Not because you want to. Or because it comes easily to you. Because you have no choice.”

He reached up and pulled Damien’s hand from his tunic front. His flesh was like ice; Damien’s hand spasmed once in his grip, then went numb. Tarrant pushed him away. Then he glanced down at his clothing and scowled, as though the sharp creases Damien had left in the fine silk were distortions in his own flesh. “As I must serve the lady’s cause, in this.” His tone was bitter. “I, too, have no choice.”

He looked toward the door. Damien felt the power rise in him, tides of fae responding to his will like a dog coming to heel for its master. The priest clutched his injured hand to his chest and wondered just how fast—and how effectively—his other hand could draw and strike. Could he get to the Fire before Tarrant realized what he was doing?

Then the doors were flung open and a pair of men entered. Tarrant nodded toward Senzei’s body.

“You did a brave and foolish thing in coming here,” he told Damien. His polished mask was back in place, his tone once more aloof and controlled. “I’ll admit that I didn’t expect it of you. But now that you’re here and I’m forced to deal with you, it’s time you faced the facts.” The men were gathering up Senzei’s body. “We are allies, you and I. You don’t have to like it. I curse the day it became necessary. But you will accept it—for the lady’s sake. As I must.” He glanced toward Senzei and back again, meaningfully. “I suggest you accept my service while it’s still available, priest. Your friend has very little time left.”

It’s that or Work the fae myself, Damien thought. And he knew, with sudden dread clarity, that he would never survive such an immersion. The evil in this place was too deeply entrenched; it would draw the life from his wounded flesh before he had the chance to whisper his first key.

We have no alternative, he thought bitterly. We have run out of options.

“For now,” he responded. Not in years had he spoken such distasteful words—but the Hunter was right. There was no other choice. “This once.”

God help you if you betray us!

They carried the body to an upstairs room, a vaulted chamber that had clearly been outfitted for guests. There they laid Senzei atop a velvet-draped bed, beneath a heavy brocade canopy supported by four carved posts. The wood of the bed was dark, as was all the room’s furniture; even the heavy curtains were a carmine so deep that it might almost have been black. But the fire that had been kindled in the room’s large fireplace cast a crisp, golden light across the room, and picked out features of the decor in reassuring amber. Compared to the jet black rooms below, it was almost a human place.

Tarrant wasted no time in superficial examination. With a slender knife that he had produced from somewhere on his person, he cut through the layers of Senzei’s clothing with the innate skill of a surgeon and laid his dressing bare. The thick white bandages were stained with a motley of dark, unpleasant colors, and a fetid smell arose from their surface. Damien was dimly aware of the two servants leaving them as Tarrant’s knife slid beneath the blood-soaked cloth, dividing it. Slowly, he peeled the crusted layers back from the sorcerer’s skin. A putrid scent filled the room: the stink of advanced infection. It was a smell Damien knew all too well—the smell of flesh failing, of a body too far gone into death for any mere Healing to save it. With a sinking heart he watched as Tarrant took out a handkerchief—fine white linen, edged in gold embroidery—and carefully wiped Senzei’s side clean of the rotted gore that clung to him, so that the wound itself might be seen.

His entire side was black and swollen; the sides of his wound gaped open like the mouth of a fish, despite the stitches that had been meant to close it. Within, it was possible to see the damp sheen of muscle and the sharp edge of a lower rib, both darkly discolored, both smelling of decay. Damien studied it for a long, despairing moment, then looked up at Tarrant—and found the man watching him, pale eyes made gold by the firelight.

“You may See, if you wish.” The Hunter’s voice was quiet, barely discernable above the crackle of the flames. “The currents are safe enough for you here. But don’t interrupt me, or try to interfere. To do so would cost your friend’s life. You understand?”

Stiffly, he nodded.

The Hunter turned back to Senzei and fixed his eyes on the wound. Slowly, soundlessly, his lips formed words; a key? Damien considered Working his own vision, felt a chill of fear flood through him—and carefully ignored it, as he envisioned the patterns that would give him Sight.

Delicately. Only a word, a thought; he had no desire to touch any more of the Forest’s fae than he had to, Worked or no. Malevolence rose about him like a black, ice-cold lake; he dipped his thoughts into it just briefly, then quickly withdrew. The lake subsided, though its cold had invaded his veins. And his Sight—

Was as it had never been before. Or was it simply that the fae was so different here, which made its form so alien? Dark purple power pooled about the bedposts, slithered up the carved wood like deep violet serpents—and then slid across the coverlet, seeking Senzei’s flesh. Damien had to stop himself from reaching out to Banish them. Though he sensed in every fiber of his being that the purpose of these things was to devour, to destroy, the Hunter’s last words echoed in his brain: Interfere, and it will cost your friend’s life.

And his other words, even more ominous. You will trust me . . . because you have to.

Damn you, Merentha!

He watched as the tendrils of violet dissolved, becoming a thick purple fog that surrounded Senzei, clinging to his skin. There seemed to be movement within its substance; Damien Worked his senses to let him take a closer look—and stiffened in horror as he Saw. For the cloud was not a cloud at all, but a swarm of creatures too tiny for the unWorked eye to see. Wormlike, hungry, they searched the surface of Senzei’s skin until they found a pore or other opening large enough to admit them. Then they slithered in, their microscopic tails lashing from side to side as they worked their way deeper and deeper into his flesh. Damien caught the flash of teeth at one forward end, and remembered the creatures that had devoured their horse; these were clearly their kin, though made of much less solid stuff. He had to fight to swallow back the rising tide of disgust inside him. If this was supposed to be some kind of Healing . . . but no, it wasn’t that. Tarrant had made that very clear.

They were under Senzei’s skin, now, working their way into his bloodstream. Where his veins were close enough to the surface it was possible to see them moving, the skin rippling as they passed. Thousands upon thousands of them had entered Senzei’s body already, enough to tint his blood deep purple, and more were digging their way in each second. It seemed that his entire body had become filled with purple fluid, filled near to bursting. Damien looked at the wound itself and saw larger creatures nestled in the rotting flesh, feasting on its putrescence. Sickness rose in the back of his throat, and he struggled not to give in to it. He had seen more terrible things in his life, but never under conditions like this: watching them devour a traveling companion while he stood impotently on the sidelines. Suddenly he hated Tarrant with a passion that surpassed even his religious abhorrence of the man; this was personal, intensified by his suspicion of just how much the man enjoyed having him in such a position. As if frustrating a member of his former Church was itself a triumph, to be savored.

And then, the cloud withdrew from Senzei. The fog, now black, seeped from his veins like blood, and hovered over him silently, a storm cloud waiting to break. Where the firelight played on its substance it sizzled, and thin filaments could be seen writhing on its surface. Then Tarrant muttered the key words of a Banishing, and it vanished. Not slowly, like a fog being scattered by the wind, but immediately—as though his will, which commanded the action, knew no middle ground.

Damien looked at the wound, saw the clear red of untainted blood slowly pooling in that opening. The carrion-eaters were gone, or at least invisible; he had no real desire to find out which. He looked up at the Hunter—and saw that the man’s face was white with pain, as if the healing of Senzei were somehow wounding him.

“Now the fever,” the Hunter whispered. He held out a hand, palm up, over the body. Slowly it began to give off a strange glow, a cold silver light that illuminated little of what surrounded it, but burned the eyes to look upon as if it were an actual flame. “Coldfire,” he whispered. He molded it in his hand like some nacreous clay, forming it into the shape of what it was not: true fire. And it burst up suddenly in his hand, like a flame devouring fresh fuel, and flickered like its namesake—but there was no heat that came from it, and little of its light reached beyond its brilliant surface. Staring at it, Damien felt the warmth drawn out of him, gone to feed something at the heart of the non-fire; with effort he drew back, and erected a barrier that he hoped would suffice to protect him.

“As volatile as true fire,” the Hunter whispered. “And as dangerous.” He brought his hand down to the wound and tipped it over; the coldfire slid into the wound like a viscous liquid. As it made contact with his flesh, Senzei cried out—a scream of pain, of terror, of utter isolation. Damien leaned forward and took him by the shoulders, not to hold him down so much as to reassure him, by that touch, that he was not alone. Beneath his fingers he could feel the chill of the Hunter’s coldfire as it worked its way through Senzei’s veins, consuming the heat of the fever with mindless hunger. As it passed through the thick veins in his neck, toward his brain, Senzei stiffened; then, with a sudden sharp cry, he went limp. Damien turned back sharply to the Hunter—who was leaning back, clearly well satisfied with his work.

“He’ll sleep now,” Tarrant said. “I’ve cauterized the wound as well as my skills will allow. True Healing is denied me—it would cost me my life to attempt it—but the coldfire is an adequate substitute, in some things. His fever is down and shouldn’t rise again. It will take some regeneration of living flesh to close the wound properly . . . but the Workings of life are no longer in my repertoire. I must leave that to you.”

Damien was about to answer when a gong suddenly sounded in the distance. In answer to his unspoken question the Hunter said, “Dawn. And I have work to do before the keep can be shuttered for the day.” He pulled something out of a pocket in his outer tunic and threw it to Damien; a small key. “For the window.” He paused. “I’m sure you’ll understand that I cannot allow you free run of the castle during the daylight hours. Not yet, anyway.”

The exhaustion of the last few endless days was taking hold of Damien; he found that he lacked the strength to argue. “What about Ciani?”

“Tomorrow night. I promise you. In the meantime . . . I will see that you’re brought suitable food.” His eyes narrowed as he studied Damien’s person. “And a bath. There’s a chamber adjoining this one, with amenities between; you may make free use of both. The doors beyond this suite will be locked until dusk, except when my servants attend you. I’m sure you could easily overwhelm my people if you wished—if you dared to leave your friend here alone . . .” The threat in his voice was unmistakable. “But I still have the lady, don’t I? So it would behoove you to cooperate.” He nodded toward Senzei. “See that he’s exposed to the sun when it rises. That will destroy any remnants of my power which still adhere to his veins. I recommend you don’t attempt a Healing until that’s done.” The distant gong sounded again: a deeper, more resonant note. “If you will excuse me.”

Without further word or gesture he left the room. There must have been a bolt on the outside, for it was that rather than the turning of a lock that Damien heard. The priest turned toward the window—and felt his physical defenses giving way at last, to a tide of hunger, exhaustion, and hopelessness so powerful that it had taken all his reserves to hold it back this long. He tried to estimate the hours since they had awakened on Morgot, but couldn’t; it seemed like days—years—a lifetime. As if they hadn’t just arrived in the Forest, but had always been there—subject to its hungers, its fears, its eternal darkness, the fierce currents of its power . . .

With effort, he managed to reach the window. He reached up and pulled the heavy curtain aside, only to find two heavy planks of wood that served as internal shutters, holding back the light. He rumbled for the key that Tarrant had given him and fitted it into the small golden lock between the two panels. The key turned easily, but the heavy wooden shutters required all his remaining strength. When he had them pushed back halfway into their storage slots, he paused and leaned against the wall to one side, breathing heavily. And he contemplated that there was only so long a body could function in overdrive, without sleep or food to sustain it. In the distance, a dark gray light was seeping across the horizon. He estimated how long it would take the sun to rise to the height of this window, then checked to see that Senzei was lying in the path of its light. It was all he had strength to do. The pain in his side, denied for so many hours, lanced through his torso with fresh reminder of his own weakness, and the strain of forty hours with no more rest than a brief fit of delirium in Morgot added its weight to his exhaustion. He stared at the horizon for a few more moments, watching for a change that he knew would occur too slowly for him to see—but by the time the white sun of Erna had cleared the horizon and the first few stars of the galaxy had grudgingly succumbed to its light, he was lost in a sleep so deep, so insulating, that not even the thought of sunlight over the Forest was enough to awaken him.

They came for him at sunset, as soon as it began to grow dark. They gave him time to see that Senzei was well, to affirm that the Healing he had done at midday hadn’t been banished by the coming of night—and then they directed him to follow them, through the castle’s upper corridors. For once, he was not afraid to leave his companion behind. It seemed unlikely that the Hunter would have invested so much effort in saving Senzei’s life if he was only waiting for Damien’s absence in order to kill him.

Food and rest had done much to renew his confidence—not to mention a much-needed bath and a timely shave. His face was raw but no longer stubble-covered, and his skin had been rubbed clean of both Forest grime and caked blood. He had even toweled down Senzei, scraping off the residue of gore that encrusted him to find clean, pink flesh beneath, rapidly healing. The latter was a monument to the Forest’s earth-fae, which, once tamed, intensified each Working a thousandfold. He wondered if it was just his room that had been guarded from the ferocity of the currents, or the entire castle; if the latter, it meant that he and the Hunter were on much more equal ground.

Then they took him into the guest room where the Hunter was waiting—and where Ciani lay, as still and white as Senzei had been.

He ignored the adept and hurried to her side. Her flesh was cool to the touch, but the pulse that throbbed beneath his fingertips was regular. No sooner had he ascertained that than her eyes fluttered open—and she was in his arms, shivering in a mixture of fear and relief, her tears soaking the wool of his shirt as he held her.

“You see,” the Hunter said quietly. “As I promised.”

“Her memory is back?”

“All that I took.” The adept seemed to hesitate. “Perhaps . . . more.”

Damien looked up at him, sharply. In his arms, Ciani trembled.

“This reunion will be managed better without my presence,” the Hunter said shortly. “You should know that these are her first waking moments since Morgot—she knows nothing of what you’ve done, or what has passed between us. You’ll need to bring her up to date. When you’re done here, have my servants bring you to the observatory. We have plans to discuss.”

And he left, without further word. Not until the heavy door had closed behind him did Ciani draw back from Damien. Her eyes were red, her breathing unsteady. “Tarrant . . .”

“Is the Hunter,” he said quietly. And he told her—what they knew, what they suspected, what they feared. She drank it all in hungrily, as though somewhere in that sea of knowledge the key to life was hidden. And it was, for her. Even in such a state, that much remained true.

In time, she grew calm. In time, he was convinced that what the Hunter had said was true: her memories were intact, back to the day of the attack in Jaggonath. He had returned them.

“It hurt him,” she whispered. “I think . . . I think it almost killed him, to absorb so much of my psyche. As if the sheer humanity of my memories was somehow a threat to him. I sensed that. Without knowing where I was, or what was happening.” She shivered. “I sensed it . . . as though his thoughts were my own.”

“Anything else?”

“He was furious with you. For entering the Forest. Furious because he would now have to deal with you, instead of just settling things with me. Any entanglement with the living is a threat to him . . . as if it somehow could cost him his life, I don’t understand it exactly. He blames you for that.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed. “That’s fair enough. I blame him for a lot.”

A hint of a smile crossed her face; the old Ciani, showing through. “What did he mean, we have plans to discuss?”

“He says he’s going with us.”

There was fear in her eyes—but only for an instant, and then it was subsumed by something far stronger: her curiosity. “It’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you wanted,” he reminded her. “But now there’s no way to avoid it. I don’t believe we can get out of here without his help, and he’s raised questions . . .” He hesitated. He didn’t want to bring that up, not now; Ciani had enough to deal with without facing the fact that her assailants were perhaps merely tools for some much darker, much more powerful force. “If his honor really binds him, as he insists, we may be safe enough.”

“It does.” Her eyes stared out into empty space, as if looking out upon a remembered landscape. “It’s the glue that holds it all together for him. The last living fragment of his human identity. If he lets that go . . . he’ll be no more than a mindless demon. Dead, to all intents and purposes. A tool of your hell, without any will of his own.”

“Not a pretty concept.”

“He’s very proud, and very determined. His will to live is so strong that every other force in his life, every other concern, is subordinated to it. That’s what’s kept him alive all these years.” She shuddered. “If he didn’t feel that the question of honor was so linked to his personal survival—”

“Then we would all be dead,” he finished for her. “That explains a lot. What I don’t understand is that he’s returned the memories to you—along with a few of his own, I gather—and now we’re all here together, restored as a group. He’s undone the damage he caused. So why is it so necessary for him to come along? How does Revivalist honor play a part in that?”

Her eyes were wide, her voice solemn. “He promised someone,” she whispered. “Just that. He promised someone he would never hurt me . . . and then he did. He betrayed himself. The force of his self-hatred . . .” She looked away. “You can’t imagine it,” she breathed. “But I remember it, as though it were my own. And . . . there aren’t words . . .” She clutched herself, as though by doing so she could keep his memories from coming to her. “He perceives himself as balanced on a very fine line, with death on both sides of him. And if at any moment he fails to choose the course that will maintain his balance—”

“He dies,” Damien muttered.

“Or worse,” she told him. “There are far, far worse things than mere death that lie in wait for him now.”

Yes, Damien thought, there would be. A thousand years or more of hell in the making, with new devils spawned by each sinner. And all of them gunning for him, the one arrogant adept who escaped their clutches . . .

He kissed her on the forehead. “You’ve earned your keep,” he told her. And despite all his fears, and the long hours of despair behind him, he smiled. “Lucky for us that when he returned your memories he did so this imperfectly; the information you picked up from him may give us enough control over the situation to make traveling with him viable—”

“As he probably intended,” she whispered.

Startled, Damien fell silent. Long enough to consider what he knew of the man—and just how hard it would have been for the Hunter to discuss such things openly. To bare his soul as it must be bared, lest the group refuse to travel with him. In which case it would mean that his honor couldn’t be vindicated. In which case—

“Yes,” he said quietly. “In control, as always.” He glanced at the door, felt his arm about Ciani tighten protectively. “Even when he’s not here.”

He got up from the bed, and helped her to do the same.

“Come on,” he said. “I think it’s time we had a little talk with our host.”

The observatory had been established on the roof of the castle’s highest tower, surrounded by a low crenellated wall and a panoramic view of the Forest far below. A number of farseers had been set about the edge, alongside more arcane machinery whose form gave no hint as to its purpose. Far below, white mist veiled the Forest’s canopy, and the distant mountains jutted through it like islands rising from a foamy sea. In the center of the roof was an unusually large farseer with an intricate viewpiece. Surrounding it, carved into the black stone surface of the tower, was a circle of arcane symbols, precisely aligned. It struck Damien as odd that an adept should require such things. Generally it was only the unschooled who relied so heavily on symbology.

Gerald Tarrant was busy adjusting the largest farseer when they arrived, but he quickly looked up from the faceted eyepiece to acknowledge them. He bowed formally to Ciani—the gesture of another time, another world. He might have been born of a different race entirely, so much had Erna changed since he had last lived in it.

“You have decided,” he said. A question.

Before Ciani could answer, Damien snapped, “I don’t see that we have much choice.”

“Just so,” he agreed. He turned from them to gaze out into the night, as if reading meaning into its darkness. “It might interest you to know that your enemies have staked out the road to Sheva as your most likely point of departure from the Forest.”

“They won’t enter the woods, then?” Ciani asked.

“If they did, it might save you all some trouble; nothing within my borders can withstand me.”

“How many are there?”

“Six. A formidable company. They’ve established a false trail leading to the Serpent, meant to convince you that they departed for home . . . but their presence is like a cancer at the edge of my realm. It would be impossible for me to miss it.” His gaze came to rest on Ciani, lingered there. “I regret, my lady, that your own assailant no longer seems to be among them; apparently he left soon after the incident in Morgot. Perhaps they sensed that if he were with them, we need only destroy that small company to see that your faculties were returned to you.”

Damien’s tone was bitter. “As it is . . .”

“We must do what you originally planned, and enter the rakhlands to hunt him down. Only now you must travel at night.”

Damien refused to rise to the bait. “I take it we avoid Sheva?”

“And have them on our tail all the way? No.” The Hunter smiled. “I have other plans.”

When he said nothing more, Damien prompted, “Share them with us?”

“Not yet. When the preparation is complete. Have patience, priest.”

Overhead, the clouds shifted. From Prima’s disk, now visible, silver light spilled across the landscape. Tarrant’s eyes flickered toward the moon, and his hand tightened on the body of the farseer.

“Stargazing?” Damien asked.

“Call it an ancient science.” He studied the pair of them as though considering how much to tell them. Then he stepped back and gestured toward the heavy black machine. “Take a look.”

Damien glanced at Ciani; she nodded. Somewhat warily, he stepped into the warded circle. If the ancient symbols focused any Working on him, he didn’t feel it. He lowered his right eye to the viewpiece, saw Prima leap forward from the darkness to confront him. The leading edge of Magra Crater was a fine line on the silver horizon, and just below were five long channels, stretching like fingers across the face of the globe.

When he had seen his fill of the familiar lunar features he stood up again. “Seems like a lot of excess bulk for that kind of magnification.”

“Is it?” the Hunter asked softly. “Work your Sight, and you may think otherwise.”

“In this place? The current would—”

“I insulated your rooms, so that you could Heal there. What I did here was . . . similar. You’re quite safe where you stand. Go ahead,” he urged. “The view will educate you.”

Damien hesitated; the degree to which the man knew exactly how to bait him was beginning to get on his nerves. But at last curiosity won out over caution. “All right.” He envisioned the first key of a Seeing in his mind, let it mold the earth-fae to his will—

And nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

He tried to Work his other senses. The result was the same. The totality of his failure was staggering. It was as if the fae had somehow become . . . unworkable. As if all the rules he had come to take for granted had suddenly been unwritten.

“Inside that circle,” Tarrant said quietly, “there is no fae.”

He heard Ciani gasp, almost did so himself. “How is that possible?”

“Never mind that,” the Hunter put his hand on the barrel of the farseer. “Look now.”

Damien lowered his eye to the viewpiece—and saw the surface of Prima, just as before. Magnified exactly as it had been, with the farseer still fixed on the features he had chosen.

He stood, but said nothing. Words had failed him.

“Damien?” It was Ciani.

“The same,” he managed. “It’s still . . . the same.” The truth was almost too fantastic. “It’s not a farseer.”

Tarrant shook his head. “The old Earth word was telescope. He stroked the black tube proudly, possessively. “Crystal lenses, ground to precise specifications. Distanced apart at intervals determined by Earth-science. And it works. Every time. No matter who uses it, no matter what they expect, or what they might hope for, or fear . . . it works.” There was something in his voice that Damien had never heard there before. Awe? “Imagine a whole world like that. A world of unalterable physical laws, where the will of the living has no power over inanimate objects. A world in which the same experiment, performed at a thousand different sites by a thousand different men, would have exactly the same result each time. That is our heritage, Reverend Vryce. Which this world denied us.”

He looked at the telescope and tried to envision a world such as the Hunter described. And at last could only mutter, “I can’t imagine it.”

“Nor I. After years of trying. The magnitude of it staggers the imagination. That a whole planet could be so utterly unresponsive to life . . . and yet life as we know it evolved on its surface.”

“Advanced life.”

The Hunter smiled faintly. “We do like to think so.” He looked toward Ciani and indicated the telescope; an invitation. As she came forward and lowered her eye to the viewpiece, he said quietly, “Are you prepared for another question?”

Damien felt himself stiffen. Ciani looked up.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“What was it the lady’s assailants wanted, in Jaggonath?”

“You mean when they attacked me?” Ciani asked.

“Exactly.”

“Revenge,” Damien told him. “Ciani had escaped from them—”

“Hell of a long trip, for vengeance.”

The night was very quiet.

“What are you suggesting?”

“I suggest nothing. I merely . . . ask questions. Like what would have happened if the lady’s assailant had returned to the rakhlands after crippling her—as he supposedly intended.” He gave them a moment to digest that, then continued, “According to what we know about the Canopy, when he crossed to the other side of that barrier, the bond that joined them would have been severed. Banished. From the lady’s standpoint, I imagine . . . it would be much the same as if he had died.”

“She would have been freed!”

“Not exactly an efficient vendetta, eh? A week or two of misery for her, and then it would all be over.” His pale gray eyes were fixed on Ciani, drinking in her response; there was a hunger in him that made Damien uneasy.

“You think they had something else in mind.”

With obvious reluctance, he forced his eyes away from her. “I think they intended one of two things. To kill her . . . or take her with them. Either way they would have benefited from having her disabled, by loss of memory and adeptitude. Except that in the former case, it wouldn’t really be necessary. A knife thrust through the heart is as fatal to an adept as it is to your common man on the street; if they had her under their control long enough to disable her, it seems unlikely they would have failed to kill her. If that was what they intended.”

Damien moved closer to where Ciani stood, to put a reassuring arm around her. She was trembling. “You think they meant to take me back?” she whispered.

“I’m afraid I do, lady. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. They must have come to Jaggonath for that purpose, then panicked when your shop’s defenses hit them. Had your assistant not faked your death they would surely have come back for you. As it was, they thought you were beyond their reach.”

“So they started home.”

“And met with reinforcements. Perhaps more of their kind who had been left behind, to cover the trail; perhaps some who came later, after the initial attack was launched. No matter. They guessed your friends’ intention to be a mission of vengeance on your behalf and joined forces to deal with you. And prepared to ambush you all in Morgot, because they knew you would have to pass through that port to reach their homeland.

“They know who she is now, I’ll bet.”

“So much for disguise. What next?”

“That depends on why they want her. They may try to capture her again. Or they may simply settle for killing the whole party, just to have the matter ended. Three of their kind have already died at our hands, I’ll remind you. They must be questioning whether the game is worth the cost.”

“Either way . . .”

“We’ll be ambushed in Sheva,” Ciani said quietly. “Because of me.”

“We’ll be ambushed in Sheva because we’re hunting them down like the dogs they are,” Damien corrected her.

“We will not be ambushed in Sheva.” Tarrant said irritably. “I’ve already launched a Working that will take care of that. By the time your friend is fit to travel, that small army will be long gone. Which leaves us with several larger problems to confront.” Overhead the clouds had covered Prima’s disk, darkening the night a thousandfold. It was impossible to see Tarrant’s face as he told them, “The lady would be safest if she remained here.”

“No,” Damien said firmly. And Ciani stiffened proudly, as if somehow the suggestion had poured fresh strength into her veins. “I can’t just sit back and wait,” she said. “I can’t! It’s my fight, more than anyone’s.”

“As I expected.” Tarrant said quietly. “But it had to be said. It has to be your decision. So: the lady comes with us. We cross under the Canopy. And discover what force is allied to these creatures, that hungers so desperately to possess her. There is no alternative to that course of action if the lady’s to be freed.”

“But consider this,” he said—and his voice took on something of the autumn night, its darkness and its chill. “If we take the lady into the rakhlands, whatever our intentions may be . . . might we not be doing exactly what our enemy wants?”

26

They waited alongside the road to Sheva, as they had done for many nights. But despite the doubts that several had expressed, the one who guided them insisted that they were right, that this was the correct place to be; and so they waited, hungry and uneasy, anxious to obtain their vengeance and then hurry home. As one of them had done already, in order to report to the Keeper.

And then the humans came.

They emerged from the Forest’s edge barely an hour after dusk. Two men and one woman, the same trio that had left from Jaggonath so many days ago. Only now it was possible to see past the woman’s makeup, as though her nights in the Forest had somehow compromised her skill in applying it. Even the newcomers could recognize her, from the description given them in the rakhlands.

So she’s not dead! one hissed.

Not yet, another responded hungrily.

They could hear the humans speaking now, and as the trio drew closer they could make out words. The woman was angry at the Hunter for what he had done to her and wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible. The large man—who had been so much trouble in Morgot—insisted that it was all for the best, that if she hadn’t demanded they leave without the Hunter, he would have insisted on it. Only the tall, pale one was silent, but it was easy to see as he adjusted his Worked spectacles that he had been through much, and not recovered well.

Excellent.

The attackers were still six strong, twice the number that had first set forth on this ill-fated mission. Compared to the puny human force that faced them, they were little less than an army.

The sorcerer isn’t with them! one exulted.

They refused to travel with him.

Our luck.

Yes . . .

He had taken them by surprise, that one. He, and that damnable bitch from the plains. She had gone right home after the battle, driven off by the raw malevolence of the sorcerer’s domain. So now she was out of the picture. As for the sorcerer himself . . . who cared where he was, as long as he was absent? The humans were alone. That was all that mattered.

We kill them, one of the newcomers instructed. Quickly. And make sure of it this time.

There were murmurs of protest—of hunger, of fear—but they soon settled down. The newcomer was right. They had tried a more complicated plan, and the humans had come hunting them. Now it was time to end it.

The Keeper would simply have to accept that.

The humans were closer now; it was possible to hear them arguing. The six tensed, waiting for the right moment.

“This is a mistake-” the thin man was saying.

“You’re outvoted, Zen” The large man’s voice was brusque, unyielding. “Tarrant’s just too vulking dangerous. I’d rather face a horde of these demons, unarmed, than have that kind of power behind my back.”

“But—”

“He’s right,” the woman said quietly. Her voice was tense, her manner strained. She looked as though she hadn’t slept for days. “We don’t know anything about his motives. Except that he thrives on human terror—and if he traveled with us, we’d be the only humans in range for quite some time.” She shivered. “He fed on me once. Once is enough.”

They charged.

They ran silently, slipping from shadow to shadow as fluidly as though they themselves were composed of nothing more solid than darkness. The humans were so wrapped up in their argument that it was seconds before they noticed that anything was amiss. And seconds were enough. The first of the attacking army was within arm’s reach of the nearest horse when the priest cried out, “Heads up!” and the battle was joined.

Too late, for the humans. Even as the priest whipped out his sword, the nearest attacker had his horse by the bridle; with a sharp jerk he twisted the creature’s head at an angle it was loath to adopt. The horse staggered wildly, and the priest’s swing went wide of its target. Another twist and the horse went down violently, slamming onto its side. The priest rolled free, barely. A second attacker leapt onto him while he was still completing his roll, while his sword was still trapped beneath his body; claws raked the suntanned face, drawing rivers of blood. The priest shivered, feeling the first touch of their cold hunger invade his flesh. He kicked out with all his might—and his strength was considerable, for a human—but though his assailant’s leg cracked sharply and swung free at an odd angle from the knee down, the attacker managed to hold onto his prey.

The priest fought desperately—as did his companions, each locked in their own small knot of combat—but the attackers knew their tricks now, and would not be defeated the same way again. Besides, the tall and deadly sorcerer had not yet come to help the humans—which meant that he would not come at all, that he had abandoned them as thoroughly as they had abandoned him.

Hunger surged in the priest’s opponent as the fresh exhilaration of victory charged his limbs with newfound energy. He was beginning to drink in the man’s substance now, and flickers of memory formed in its brain—images so rich in content that he hissed in delight even as his claws dug into the priest’s protective collar and began to close on his windpipe. He absorbed the priest’s aspirations, his conquests, his fears. His lives. He experienced the passion of a woman’s embrace as this man had known it—wild and intoxicating, obsessive, uninhibited—and the thrill of battle, which felt much the same. He drank in all these things and more: childhood memories, adult desires, dreams and hopes and the terrors that came at midnight, all of them—and as he did so he gained in substance, his pale, translucent flesh taking on the color and texture of life, his empty eyes filled with the warm light of earthly purpose. In that moment, for an instant, the priest’s attacker was human— and that was a thing that none of his kind had ever been before. Not perfectly. Not until tonight.

Then the rivers of blood that had pulsed out over his hands, from the wounds his claws had made in the man’s neck, ceased. Likewise, the memories ceased to flow, and with it the warming pleasure that came from a kill. Make sure, the attacker told himself, and he cut deeply into the man’s flesh, severing a vital artery that was lodged in his throat. No more than a thin stream came forth; no more than that little bit was left in him. He lapped at the trickle, felt the man’s memories pulse in him like a second heartbeat. And then even that was gone, subsumed into his hunger. The priest was dead.

Sated, the attacker climbed to his feet. The battle was over. At the far end of the field the pale human lay, and he saw that his eyes had been torn out in the heat of that battle. His companions sat between the bodies, licking warm blood from their hands and faces, shivering with the pleasure of stolen memories. He looked for the woman—surely she hadn’t escaped—and found her where she had been felled, not far from her thinner comrade.

Dead. Her horse had reared up, terrified, and she had been thrown from the saddle. She had struck an outcropping of granite headfirst, and her cranium had split open like an overripe melon. A thick, wet mass oozed out between the cracks and dribbled wetly onto the ground.

Dead, he whispered.

They gathered around him.

Dead, another agreed. And a third added, Without question.

Who will tell the Keeper that we lost her?

They looked at the bodies, the fallen horses, the roads . . . anywhere but at their fellows.

The Keeper will know, one said at last. When we enter the homeland. As soon as we do.

They considered that. Several of them shivered.

We could . . . choose not to go home.

For a moment there was silence, as they all considered that option. But it really was no option, and they knew it. The rage when the Keeper learned of their failure would be nothing compared to what they would suffer if they tried to flee. The Master of Lema was wise, they told themselves, and experienced, and would know that these things happened. Surely their punishment would not be too harsh.

They looked at the bodies—and licked the blood from their lips—savoring the last echoes of the humans’ screams. And then they turned south, toward the outskirts of Sheva, and began the long journey home.

27

Gazing out into the night, Gerald Tarrant thought, It’s done.

The black stonework of his observatory was barely visible even to him, cloaked as it was by the absolute darkness of the true night. Soon, however, Casca would rise in the west, shedding its maverick light upon the landscape. And then the most delicate wisps of the dark fae—which were also the most powerful—would dissolve into nothingness, and take their Workings with them.

Good enough. The job was done. The demons from the rakhlands, secure in their triumph, had already turned toward home. In a few days’ time they would cross beneath the edge of the Canopy, which barrier would then keep them from realizing the truth—that they had been tricked, and tricked thoroughly.

He watched with his special vision as his Working faded in the distance, as the three humans he had altered regained their original identities. It didn’t matter now. The demons had already moved on and wouldn’t see the change. Only with the dark fae was such an illusion possible—one that was maintained not only on the gross physical planes but in the arena of thought as well—but the dark fae was a fickle, impermanent force, and could hardly be bound now to sustain an illusion that no longer had purpose. He would have to lead the lady’s people along a slightly different path, to avoid the questions which the presence of bodies might raise . . .

Listen to yourself, he thought angrily. You’re catering to them!

Better that they should cater to you.

Three nights, at most. Maybe less. Then he would leave the Forest which had been his home—his shield—his refuge. The land which was him, as much as the flesh he wore.

And what if some idiot lights a match while I’m gone? He looked out over the thickly webbed canopy and considered calling rain. With enough effort he could establish a weather pattern that would guarantee regular precipitation for months . . . but with winter coming that could as easily mean snow, and too much snow meant its own special perils. No. Let nature take its course. Amoril could handle the Forest. The albino couldn’t Work the weather yet—possibly he’d never be able to—but his skills were strong enough in other areas. And if at times he seemed to lack . . . say, a sense of aesthetics . . . he more than made up for that with his enthusiasm.

And besides, no one would know that the Hunter had left. He must remember that. No one would know that the Hunter had passed beyond a boundary through which no human thought could travel, and was cut off from that source of power which he had cultivated for centuries . . .

He felt a tremor deep within himself, as if some part of the human self he had buried had trickled through to the surface. Fear? Anticipation? Dread? He had lived for so long within the Forest’s hospitable confines that he could no longer remember what it was like to be afraid. Somewhere along the line he had lost that, too, as if fear and love and compassion and paternal devotion had all been a package deal, discarded together in that first red sacrifice which took him from one life to another.

And if he feared, was there something that would feed on that? As he fed on the fear of others—that last delicious moment when the human mind abandoned all hope and the defenses of the soul came crashing down? Man had arrived on this planet little more than a millenium ago, and already there were myriad creatures that relied on him for sustenance; why should the food chain stop there?

In the quiet of the night, the Neocount of Merentha mused: How long does evolution take, among the damned?