When True Night Falls

14

The Hunter didn’t join them right after sunset. He didn’t join them after Coreset either, though the setting of the luminous galactic center took place more than two hours after the sun was gone. A bad omen, Damien thought. But what could they do?

They had traveled a few miles along the rock-lined gully in which Mels and Tyria had found Hesseth. It was hard going, what with the loose ground and a stream they sometimes had to wade through, but it seemed to be the only path available. In this region all the comfortable terrain had been claimed by the cities or the farms; land that would favor fugitives was by definition unpleasant. Damien cursed as he pried the third stone from between his horse’s hoofed toes, knowing even as he did so that he was being unfair. They should be grateful for the scraggly trees that sheltered them, and for the landscape that had dropped them below the eye level of any casual observer. And they should be doubly grateful that none of the demons who clustered about the city’s gates had taken notice of them. Yet.

They finally made camp during Coreset. The process was not one of pitching tents and tending a fire as much as going through the assorted bits and pieces that the Lester siblings had brought them and seeing what they had. The collection included a good bit of blanketry and warm clothing, an assortment of knives and small tools, rope, some food, a few cooking aids, and first aid supplies. Damien blessed them for the first aid; he hadn’t thought to mention it. The food consisted of the kind of things noncampers might purchase for a camping expedition—mostly sugared snacks and mixes for soups—but there was some dried meat and cheese and a flat, hard bread that promised to travel well, as well as several pounds of feed for the horses.

Could have been worse, he thought, repacking it. Could have been much worse.

They lit a very small fire and heated some water, while he scanned the skies for any shape that might be Tarrant. But the same twisted trees that gave them partial cover also hid most of the night sky, and at last he gave it up.

“You think they’ll come after us?” Hesseth asked.

He broke open a package of crackers—Honey Ginger Nugrams, the wrapper said—and handed one to her. They were chewy and sweet, the kind of thing good parents wouldn’t let their kids eat too often. He had planned to put cheese on top of his, but the taste dissuaded him. “I think we’d know it by now if they did,” he answered. “We’re not that far from the city gates, and there weren’t a lot of paths to choose from. If they look this way, they’ll find us.”

“Would they leave the city after sunset?” she wondered aloud.

“Let’s hope not.”

They’d have to move quickly in the morning, just in case the Matria’s hordes did indeed come after them. Their horses would be an advantage in the long run, but only on open ground, and only after they had worked the stiffness out of their legs. Damien wondered how long it would be before Toshida had a mount of his own and learned how to ride it. Not long at all, he suspected. Not nearly long enough. If he decided to come after the fugitives himself, it could be a close pursuit. They needed open ground in the very near future if they were to make the most of their current advantage.

And then Hesseth looked up sharply at the sky. Her soft hiss was one that Damien had come to associate with sudden alertness; his hand went to his sword as he followed her gaze. For a moment he saw nothing. Then the broad sweep of a predatory wing blacked out a line of stars, and he felt his own breath catch. Something with very large wings was circling overhead, just above the tops of the trees. The form was familiar, but he didn’t relax his guard. Nor would he until the Hunter—if that was indeed who it was—proved his true identity.

The great bird circled twice more, as if surveying the surrounding land, and then swooped down into the gully. For lack of more suitable turf it came down in the water, its broad wings nearly touching the two stony banks. Something was in its talons, Damien observed, soft white feathers in the grip of crimson claws, but it was thrust underwater too quickly for him to make out what it was.

Coldfire blossomed in the stream bed. It was the first time Damien had seen the Hunter transform in water, and it was well worth the vision; ice speared out from the point of contact with a suddenness that was audible, crackling and splitting as it expanded against the sides of the narrow gully. Two of the horses, tethered by the bank, whinnied unhappily and pulled at their reins; Tarrant’s merely snorted as if to say, What took you so long? Blue flames—intense but unilluminating—seared the stream bed with a cold so intense that Damien’s breath fogged in the cool spring air, and frost rimmed the scraggly plants closest to the stream.

When the coldfire died, it left Tarrant on hard ice, and he quickly stepped to the shore. Frost shivered from his boots as he climbed to where the two had made camp, and ice crystals glimmered in his soft brown hair. It might be early spring in the eastern lands, but the Hunter traveled within his own private winter.

He looked at the two of them, at the horses, and at the camp. Damien could see the pale silver eyes taking it all in, sifting through what he saw for the information he wanted. At last he nodded, more to himself than to them. “You move quickly when you have to.” He threw something to Damien: soft and white and spattered with blood. “Here. I brought you dinner.”

Damien looked at the dead bird in his hands, dimly aware that Tarrant had thrown another to Hesseth. For a moment all that occurred to him was how utterly unlike Tarrant it was to hunt for them. Then he saw the harness. With reddened, sticky fingers he undid the tiny catch, pulling the leather contraption from the bird’s cooling body. Knowing in his gut what it was, what it had to be. Not liking that knowledge one damn bit.

“Carrier birds,” he muttered.

Tarrant nodded. “They were released at dusk to travel south, and crossed my path soon after. I killed the first because it seemed suspicious; after I realized what it was, I hunted down its companion.” He walked to a dry bit of ground and lowered himself onto it; the thickness of his mantle protected him from the dusty earth. “I searched for more, but there were none in that portion of the sky. Which doesn’t mean that no more were sent.”

“Yeah,” Damien muttered, pulling the message vellum free of its container. With care he unrolled it. “A good hundred or more, the way our luck’s running.”

The Matria’s seal was on the bottom. Even though deep inside he had known it was going to be there, it was still a shock to see it. It was even more of a shock to read the instructions outlined in the message: where, when, and how he and Hesseth were to be disposed of. Not why, he noted. Was that because the Protectors would understand her motives, or—more likely—because no one around here dared to ask questions? The procedures outlined in the letter were more typical of a police state than a thriving theocracy. He wondered how far that went. He wondered how the hell it had started.

“God in Heaven,” he muttered. “She’s a vicious one, that’s for sure.” He turned it so that he could read the heading by the fire’s light. “To the Kierstaad Protectorate.” He looked up at Hesseth.

“To the Chikung Protectorate,” she read from hers.

“Shit.” He read it again, wincing at the detailed instructions for disposing of the two travelers after capture. “Not much room for compromise here. It’s a good bet she’s warning all the Protectorates, and in that case . . . shit. It’ll mean the shore’s off limits all the way down the coast.”

He offered the letter to the Hunter, who read it. If he had any reaction to its source—or its tone—he didn’t show it. “Clearly they mean business.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Our enemies are thorough,” he said coolly. “Did you expect any less?”

Damien glared. “I thought they’d want to capture us, yes, question us to find out who we really were, what we wanted—”

“They know who you really are,” Tarrant interrupted, “and they know what you want. These documents are no less than a declaration of war.” When Damien said nothing, he pressed, “Do you doubt their purpose? Do you question who sent them?”

“No,” he muttered. Fingering the seal of the Matria which was affixed to the last inch of the missive. Leaving a smear of crimson on the golden wax. “No. You were right. Whatever’s wrong here, the Matrias are part of it. And that means . . .” He couldn’t finish. The thought was too painful.

That means that the Church is involved.

“At least they think we’re coming by ship,” Hesseth said. “That’ll buy us some time, if nothing else.”

Damien looked again at the letter in his hand, seeking out the line that made reference to that. It is believed they may be traveling south on a Western ship named the Golden Glory. All ports should be alert. “We shouldn’t count on it,” he warned. Then added, thoughtfully, “Rozca’ll have a nasty time thanks to this.”

“Rozca can handle it,” Tarrant assured him. “All he has to do is let his ship be searched and he’s in the clear. Correct? Meanwhile he’s bought us what we needed most: time.” He nodded approvingly. “It was well planned, Vryce. Considering how quickly you threw it all together, it does you credit.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. He felt strangely uncomfortable receiving praise from the Hunter. “What now?”

Tarrant looked back toward the city. “The next step is to choose our destination.”

“South,” Hesseth said quickly.

The men both looked at her.

“If, as you say, the Matria is allied to our enemy . . . and if she knows our purpose . . . then by her own words, our enemy is to the south of here.” She held up the letter in her hand.

“Just so,” the Hunter agreed. “And I have some information that may bear on our route . . .” His gaze fixed suddenly on Damien; the gray eyes narrowed. “But I think there’s a need even more pressing than that,” he said softly. “How long since you’ve slept, priest?”

“Since dawn,” he muttered. He had been trying not to think about sleep, had tried to just keep going for as long as it took and deal with the need for rest when time and circumstances allowed, but the Hunter’s words were fresh reminder of just how long it had been. And once named, the specter of exhaustion could no longer be denied. “I didn’t sleep more than an hour or two last night, if you must know.”

“You probably owe your life to that,” he said dryly. “Hesseth?”

“I could go on if we had to,” she said. “But sleep would be welcome.”

He nodded. “We need to move on a bit farther, until we find safer ground—”

“You think they’d come after us tonight?” Damien asked sharply.

“No. But I do think that the walls of this gully were sculpted by water, and it would be a shame if all our plans were laid to waste by a flash flood. It is that season, you know.”

He gained his feet in a single fluid movement, like the uncoiling of a snake. “When we find higher ground, I’ll stand watch for the two of you. So that you can sleep in safety. Until dawn, at least.”

It was a good thing he was too tired to really think about their arrangement, Damien reflected as he helped Hesseth pack up their gear. Otherwise it might really scare him how comfortable he was with the thought of placing his safety in Tarrant’s hands.

Hell, he thought. You can get used to anything.

It took them nearly two hours to find a suitable campsite. By then they were truly exhausted, and even the horses looked drained. Five midmonths of confinement had taken their toll on the beasts, and Damien guessed that it would be a long time before they exhibited the strength and endurance that was the hallmark of their species.

They found a patch of ground that was reasonably smooth and threw their blankets down upon it. The bulk of the galaxy had set some time ago, leaving the sky mostly black. Damien muttered something about how long would it be until the first true night occurred? Did anyone know? Tarrant said something back which involved calendars and timetables and a whole list of details . . . but at least he knew when it was coming. Which was all Damien really needed to know tonight. Certainly all he could absorb.

He was asleep as soon as his head touched the ground.

And dreamed.

. . . the cathedral is dark, so dark, not even a glimmer of moonlight breaking through the colored windows, nothing to illuminate the cold stone vastness but the glitter of one tiny candle, flickering like the light of a distant star . . .

. . . and he walks down the aisle toward it as one might walk toward the light of God, feeling its warmth in the breezes of the aisle, drawn to it with palpable force . . .

. . . scent in the air, sweeter than incense, stronger than perfume, musky and compelling. A thick, caressing aroma that warms his throat when he breathes, that tingles in his lungs like cerebus smoke and spreads outward in his blood, outward with every heartbeat, outward to every cell of his body, warming, caressing, inviting . . .

At the altar is a figure. Wraithlike, it is veiled in layers of fine white silk that ripple with each breath it takes. The light of a single candle is captured by one layer, then another, then by the flesh beneath. It is a woman’s body, Damien notes, round and well-formed and infinitely pleasing. The curve of a breast catches the light, the darkness of a nipple, the shadow of an inner thigh. Only the face is darkness in shadow, so that Damien cannot make out who it is. But the invitation is clear in her posture as well as her scent.

A slender hand reaches to the neck of the gauzy robe, unfastens it. Silk whispers downward over smooth flesh, layer after layer until all are puddled on the floor about her feet. Her breasts are full, heavily rounded, and a sheen of sweat is on her thighs. The musky aroma envelops him, and he feels his body stiffen in response. It is not so much pleasure that drives him now, but need; a primal hunger that has no name, that ceased to have a name millennia ago when humans learned to dilute their animal drives and thus control them. This has no control. This has no trappings of civilization, or of intellect. This has no possible end but the utter submission to a drive so deeply embedded in his flesh that a million years of species denial could never fully conquer it.

He reaches out to her. The flesh is dark beneath her breasts, with a line of small brown spots beneath each one. Something is wrong about that. His head throbs as he tries to think, as he struggles to remember. That and the smell and the touch of her body, silk-soft, more like fine fur than like human skin . . .

He feels a coldness stirring deep inside, even as he moves toward her. Something is wrong, so very wrong . . . his head is spinning. He struggles to orient himself, even as his body responds to her invitation. No: to her demand . . .

And then he looks at her face. The flickering light illuminates her features in spurts of amber, a strobe of recognition.

Golden eyes

Golden fur.

The Matria’s crown . . .

He awoke suddenly. Breathless. Shaken. It took him a minute to remember where he was, to make out Tarrant’s outline in the shadows. The Hunter was watching him. He shuddered once, uncomfortably aware of the stiffness in his groin. Not hot now, nor expectant, but tight with dread. And fear.

He let the blanket gather in his lap as he forced himself to a sitting position. And breathed the night air deeply, trying to calm himself.

“Bad dream?” the Hunter asked softly.

“Yeah.” He looked up at him. “One of yours?”

Tarrant smiled faintly. “There’s no need for that now, is there?”

He rubbed his temples. The dream’s afterimage was rapidly fading from his mind. It was important to remember . . . what? The thoughts wouldn’t come together. Something important. Something he had almost understood.

“You need help?” Tarrant asked softly.

He noticed that the Hunter’s sword was thrust into the ground not far from him. Absorbing the earth-fae? He could feel the cold of its power through his blankets. “I dreamed of the Matria . . . I think. Only it wasn’t her, it was a rakh . . .”

Rakh.

He was remembering now. The rakhene women who’d been in Hesseth’s camp. Some of them clearly in heat—or its rakhene equivalent—their naked hunger distracting every male within reach. Clearly that image had etched itself upon his brain, along with attendant hormonal messages.

He was remembering other things, too. Things he had learned on their last journey together. The facts came together, impacted, almost too fast to absorb.

“The rakh women-” he whispered. “Oh, my God . . .”

Somehow he managed to sit up. He was shaking badly.

Tarrant’s face was lost in shadow, but even so the priest could sense the intensity of his scrutiny.

“You asked why would only the women be the seers—the Matrias—when women have no more prophetic power than men. But they do. You said it yourself, back in . . . hell, I don’t remember. Soon after I met you. You said that only women could use the tidal fae. Remember?”

“I said that women could sometimes See it,” the Hunter said coolly. “No human being has ever Worked it. It defies that kind of control—”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I tried it, Reverend Vryce. I nearly died. Later, assuming my failure to be a consequence of my gender, I tried to manipulate one woman who could See it.” He shook his head stiffly. “Not even my will can tame such a power. And if not mine, then whose?”

“The rakh,” he whispered. Knowing the craziness of the suggestion even as he voiced it. “That’s the fae they draw on. Remember? And a few of them know how to control it consciously.” He looked over at Hesseth. “She does,” he whispered. “We found that out after you’d been captured. The rakh females use sorcery. All of them! Not human-style, not with the earth-fae . . . but it’s sorcery all the same.” He felt suddenly breathless. Suddenly afraid. “Do you understand? Only the females.”

The Hunter’s voice was very quiet. “Are you saying the Matria is rakh?”

“Am I?” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Is that possible? It seems insane . . . but so much is in this place. You asked it yourself: why would men be banned from Church leadership? It doesn’t make any sense at all if they’re human. But if they’re rakh . . .” He looked down at Hesseth. Fully asleep, probably dreaming, her claws twitching slightly as if in response to an unseen threat. “She said they used the tidal fae. Can humans do that?”

Tarrant hesitated. “The women I’ve known who could See that power were very rare . . . and usually quite mad. The tidal fae’s inconstant, unpredictable, often violent. Anyone tapping into it—”

“Would be equally unpredictable. Yes? Especially if they relied upon it for disguise. They’d have to hide when the power waned, come out only when it was stable enough for Working. Don’t you see? My God!” He shut his eyes, trembling. With excitement? With fear? “That’s what the Matria did. They never knew when she was going to show up, or when she’d suddenly cancel an appearance.” He looked at the Hunter. “You were in other cities. You tell me. Was it like that in all of them?”

Tarrant considered it. “Yes,” he said at last. “That seems to be the general pattern here. I attributed it to an eccentricity of their Order, but if it’s not . . . if you’re right . . .”

“It would mean a lifetime of subterfuge. Years spent among the enemy. Hesseth says that even humanity’s smell is intolerable to her—”

“It would also mean the Church here was in rakhene hands,” Tarrant reminded him. “And has been for centuries. Toward what end?”

“You said they hunted human children,” Damien said softly. “Considering how the rakh hate our species, wouldn’t that make sense?”

“I said they used human children to hunt the faeborn.”

“Is that so very different? As far as the children are concerned?”

For a moment Tarrant just stared at him. Then he looked away.

“There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” he said quietly. “It didn’t seem important at the time. But maybe it is.” Though the man’s face was turned away from him and half in shadow, Damien thought that his expression darkened. Something hard and cold came into his voice, which had not been there before. “These people kill adepts,” Tarrant told him. “All adepts. They catch them in the cradle when their senses are still so confused that they can’t protect themselves—not even reflexively—and they murder them. Every time.”

“What if it wasn’t obvious—”

“You can’t hide something like that,” he said angrily. “Not in the first few years. Not when a child responds to things that no one else can see or hear. An adept lives in a world five times as complex as that of his parents, and must struggle to sort it out. That can’t be hidden. Trust me. People have tried. Back in my day, when they feared it as a sign of possession, when it meant that a child might be put to the torch . . . it can’t be hidden, Reverend Vryce. Not ever.” He shook his head; his expression was grim. “There’s no living adept in this region at all. I know. I used my power to search the currents, to find some sign—any sign—but there’s nothing. Nothing! Man’s greatest adaptation to this world—his only adaptation—and these people have wiped it out, child by child.”

For a moment Damien couldn’t find any words. At last he managed, “You thought that wasn’t important?”

The Hunter turned back to him. His eyes were black, and cold with hate. “I thought it made perfect sense,” he snapped. “Don’t you? A land ruled by the Church’s iron hand, that tolerates no philosophical disruption . . . a Utopia in name and substance, as long as no one challenges its central doctrine. As an adept would have to do, in order to survive.” He laughed shortly, a bitter sound. “Of course this land kills its adepts, Reverend Vryce. I predicted that it would as soon as I understood who and what these people were. Didn’t you?”

“No,” he said softly. “No, I . . . never.”

“You realize their sanctity is all an illusion, don’t you? The ultimate in self-deception. They’ve learned to control the fae, all right, but it’s been at the cost of their own souls.” His eyes were focused on a distant point; perhaps in the past. Perhaps in his own soul. “Exactly what I feared would happen,” he whispered. “Exactly what I warned them about.” He shut his eyes. “Why wouldn’t they listen? Why don’t they ever listen?”

Tarrant reached out and put a hand on his horse’s shoulder; Damien was amazed to see the pale flesh tremble. He was afraid to say anything, afraid that the fragile moment might shatter like glass at the very sound of his voice. Something deeply buried and very private had come to the surface in Tarrant, perhaps for the first time in centuries. He had the sense of a door cracking open ever so slightly, admitting a brief glimpse of the Prophet’s soul. But he felt that if he said the wrong thing—if he tried to say anything at all—that door would slam shut again, with the finality of a tomb. And the brief glimpse of humanity which echoed in those words would be lost again, perhaps for a second millennia. Perhaps forever.

At last the Hunter lowered his hand from the horse; a shudder seemed to course through his body. “None of that matters now,” he said softly. “Not even their motives. The end result is that there are no sorcerers in this land, with or without the Vision. Which means that these people are helpless. Whatever evil our enemy plans . . . we’re the only ones who can stop him.”

“It also means that our enemy isn’t prepared for opposition. Right? If there’s no human sorcery here, then he’s not used to dealing with it.” He spoke slowly, carefully, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. “That could work to our advantage.”

The Hunter looked at him. And suddenly it seemed to Damien that the pale eyes were mirrors, reflecting more centuries than any one man should have to endure. Reflecting more horrors than any human soul, however corrupt, should have to witness.

“Let’s hope so,” the Hunter whispered.

15

The Protector’s keep was dark when Istram Iseldas approached it, which struck him as odd. But then, so much was odd this longmonth. First there were the reports of an invasion force moving up the coast—thanks be to a merciful God that nothing ever came of that—followed by an extremely cryptic message from the Matria of Mercia. Followed closely by last night’s trespass and arrest . . . most disturbing. Most disturbing indeed.

He lifted up the great knocker (in the shape of a stelf-hound, the symbol of the local Protectorate) and struck it against the heavy wooden door several times. The sun was nearly down, he noted, which meant that he probably should stay here overnight. God willing, he and his neighbor Protector could get things squared away well enough to make that possible.

The heavy door opened. A servant he had never seen before studied him with dark, uncommunicative eyes. Considering Istram’s rank and familiarity with this keep, it was a jarringly cold welcome.

“Protector Iseldas,” he told the man. “I’m here to see Leman Kierstaad.”

The man stepped back wordlessly to allow him to enter. Dark eyes in a pale face, black hair above, dark clothes below: unwholesome looking, Istram decided. Downright unhealthy. He’d have had the man out in the sunshine long ago, nursing a respectable tan. “If he’s in his study, I can find him.”

“Follow me,” the pale man said.

He was led through the keep in silence, his footsteps ringing eerily in the empty halls. Despite the gloom of the afternoon few lamps had been lighted, and the shadows that gathered in corners and beneath the heavy furniture were almost nightlike in their substance. To be sure, the Kierstaad abode had been gloomy since the death of its mistress—whether because Leman lacked the energy to brighten it up, or because he actively preferred it that way as an expression of his mourning, Istram couldn’t say—but its atmosphere had never seemed so dark as today. So downright oppressive. He shivered as he followed the servant, wondering what his old friend’s state of mind must be. Had the joint pressure of a Protector’s responsibility and a widower’s heartache finally proven too much for him?

But when at last he was shown into Leman Kierstaad’s presence it was in a chamber that was brightly lit, amber lamplight flooding the walls like sunshine. He noted that the shutters were closed here as elsewhere, but what did that matter? The lamplight was cheery enough, and he felt his dire mood evaporating in its warmth.

The Protector was seated in a broad carved chair, a woolen blanket across his lap. He rose slightly in greeting, then sat again. “Istram. This is a surprise. Sit down.” He waved toward a chair opposite his own. “Can I get you something? Coffee, perhaps? Or a drink? Name it.”

“Iced water will be fine,” he said. Somewhat surprised that his old friend had forgotten that preference of his. “With a sour rind, if you have it.”

Protector Kierstaad passed on the order to his dismal-looking servant, who withdrew to fulfill it. It gave Istram a chance to study his long-time neighbor. It seemed there were more lines on his face than before, or perhaps the old lines were harsher. Little wonder. The last six years had been rough on him, and if not for the responsibility of his Protectorate he probably would have called it quits long ago. The strain of the forced endurance was showing.

We’ll have to find a replacement, he thought. Can’t have this part of the coast unprotected, not even for a day.

“So,” Kierstaad said, rearranging his blanket. “It’s been a long time, Istram. How’s the wife?”

“Shopping up north. Her yearly trip.”

“Mercia, this time? Felicida?”

“Paza Nova, I believe.”

“Ah.” He chuckled. “That’ll cost you.”

“It already has.” He hesitated. “And you? Are you well?”

A shadow passed over the other man’s face. “As well as can be expected,” he said quietly. “I don’t ask much any more, you know that. God’s strength to keep this land secure, and enough memories to make life worth living.”

“And is it secure?” he asked. Hearing the edge in his own voice.

“Why do you ask?”

He sighed. He had meant to bring up the matter gradually, gently, but the words had just come out. Now it was too late to take them back. “Your men were on my land, Leman. Skulking about like a band of nightborn. It’s a miracle they weren’t killed when my own guards found them.” Kierstaad frowned. “You captured them?”

Istrarn spread his hands helplessly. “I didn’t have much choice, did I? Half a dozen uknown men, prowling the borders of my Protectorate like stelves in search of prey . . . that’s how my men described it, Lee. Even allowing for the exaggeration of the moment, it’s still rather odd.”

He waited. When Kierstaad said nothing he pressed, “I thought you might like to tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“What do you think?” he said irritably. “I’ve got my land to protect, just like you do. Something strange happens, I need to figure out what it is. Even if it comes from you.” He shrugged. “That’s my job, you know. Same as yours.”

The servant was back again, a tall glass in hand. Istram took it from him and drank deeply.

“They were hunting,” Kierstaad told him. “Some large beast attacked the villages. Mauled a child in Nester, just two days past. I sent them out to find it.”

“They weren’t armed like hunters.”

He shrugged. “They took what they thought was necessary. I didn’t supervise their choices.”

“At night?”

“Istram. Please.” He spread his hands wide; it was the kind of gesture a man might make to show that he had no weapons. “They were hunters. I’m not. They said the beast would be holed up for the night, would be well-fed and slow to respond then. It was their job, not mine. I trusted them to do it. All right?”

For a moment he just stared at the man, wishing he could read what was in his eyes. At last he sighed. “All right, Lee. If that’s all it was. But let me know next time, all right? God knows, if there’s a maneater at large I should be mobilizing, too.” Especially when we have warning of a possible invasion fleet, he almost added. Especially when 1 have to account for everything that moves and breathes within my territory.

“I’m sorry, Istram. I really am. No insult meant. Really.”

He forced himself to relax. “All right. None taken, I guess. I’ll have them released in the morning.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“I guess I’m just a little jumpy, what with the invasion warning and all. It’s the first one since I became Protector, you know.”

Kierstaad smiled faintly. “It’ll pass without incident, I’m sure. They all do.”

“And now this with the westerners. I guess nothing’s wrong, it’s just . . . it seems extreme. I . . . what’s wrong?”

“What with the westerners?” Kierstaad demanded. Suddenly tense. “What are you talking about?”

“The message that came from Mercia. You were sent one, weren’t you?” He reached into his jacket and pulled the tiny scrap of paper out. “Here it is.” He scanned it for the part he wanted, then nodded. “She wrote that all the Protectorates would be contacted. You should have gotten something by now.”

“Let me see.” He leaned forward to take the paper from him. It rolled up slightly in his hand, still set from its hours in the bird’s harness. His lips pressed together as he read it, and his eyes narrowed.

“No,” he said at last. “No, I haven’t gotten anything.”

Istram hesitated. “Doesn’t it seem a little . . . well, extreme to you? Immediate death upon capture? Not even a questioning?”

“The last pagans from the west were dealt with mercifully. And some of them escaped, to found the very nation that now threatens us. Isn’t this a safer course?”

“But these aren’t pagans. These are two of our own. A priest and a Sanctified woman, the letter says. I don’t—”

“Are you questioning a Matria’s judgment?”

Istram blinked. “No. It’s just that I . . . no. Good God. Of course not.”

“Well, then.” Kierstaad reached down to the table at his side, a fine piece with slender legs and tiled top. There was a cup sitting on it, with some pale brown liquid inside. Tee? As Istram watched his old friend sip from the fragile china cup, he remembered that the man had never cared for hot drinks. But perhaps his tastes had changed when Miranda Kierstaad died; so much about him had. “It seems that’s settled, then. I’m glad you came to me. I hear stories of other Protectors, you know, as suspicious of each other as they are of the enemy I’d hate for that to happen to us.”

Despite himself he smiled. “I can’t imagine that it would.”

The china cup was replaced; it made a faint ting on the hand-painted tiles as he set it down. There seemed to be something tense about the Protector, something that belied the warmth of his tone and the casual grace of his gestures. Was he hiding something? The thought was not a welcome one, but it worried at the edges of Istram’s brain as he watched the older man rise from his chair. Was it possible there was something to hide? Or was Istram just seeing the first clear signs of a breakdown that had been six long years in the making? The death of a man who had lost his love of life six years ago, when his wife had gone to sleep one winter night and never awakened?

If not for the Protectorate, he wouldn’t have lasted this long, Istram thought. What else is left that matters to him?

Kierstaad cleared his throat noisily. “You’re welcome for dinner, of course. And to stay the night if you want. If your people won’t worry . . .”

“I was on a tour of the border,” he told him. “They don’t expect me back for days.”

The clear gray eyes fixed on him then, with a suddenness and an intensity that were unnerving. Uncomfortable, he looked away. “Indeed? Then we must make doubly sure you’re safe.”

He called out a man’s name; not loudly, but the clear voice carried. A moment later the same servant returned.

“Will you excuse me for a few minutes, Istram?” His tone was apologetic. “I had some duties this evening which I can cancel, but I’ll need to sit down with Sems here and discuss a few things before dinner.”

“Of course.” He gestured toward the outer door. “I’ll wait outside if you like.”

“It won’t take long,” he promised. Gray eyes glittering in the lamplight. “I’ll call you as soon as we’re done.”

The western terrace of Kierstaad’s keep was a place of wonder and beauty, and Istram could never set root in it without being awed anew. A garden of crystalline structures shimmered and shivered in the slightest breeze, tinkling like glass bells each time the evening air shifted in its course. Standing in its center was like being inside a musical instrument while some exquisite hand plucked notes upon its strings. You could close your eyes and feel the music inside you, or open them and gaze upon the visual symphony that surrounded you. A thousand etched-glass leaves that captured the Core’s golden light. Delicately blown stems that glistened like icicles, refining the light into rainbow strands. A garden of miracle workmanship, a place of true magic and absolute beauty. And the last living work of Miranda Kierstaad, before the lung disease that had plagued her since birth had claimed her final breath.

Here he could share something of Leman’s sorrow, surrounded by the work of the woman his friend had adored. Was it better to have a place like this, which captured the essence of one’s love, or did it only serve as a reminder of his terrible loss? Since the garden was still intact, he assumed the former; Kierstaad was a decisive man who would surely have pulled down the crystalline trees if they had added one fraction to his pain.

The doors to the keep—glass-paneled, now thickly curtained—swung open. With but a moment’s hesitation at the doorstep, Leman Kierstaad came out onto the terrace. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” His eyes were on Istram as he walked toward the western wall, with its delicate glassy ivy. Drawing Istram’s gaze along with his own, until the visitor faced into the setting Core. “And so very fragile.”

He reached out a hand to the nearest hand-blown vine and pulled. A yard-long segment snapped into pieces; splinters of glass fell to the earth like glistening, sharp-edged rain. The motion was so quick, so unexpected, that for a moment Istram couldn’t even react. Then he stepped forward, meaning to do—what? Stop the man? It was mindless instinct that drove him, a gut response to witnessing such beauty ravaged. Even as he moved he saw Kierstaad’s eyes focus on a point behind his head. And he knew that he had been distracted for a reason.

He tried to turn. Pain burst in his skull as something struck him from behind, driving him down to his knees. He tried to cry out, but a second blow silenced him, leaving only a gasp that poured from his hips like blood. Again. He tried to raise up his arms, to protect himself, but something had been crushed that was needed to make them move; they fell limply down by his side, streaked with crimson blood, and stayed that way as he fell. Again the blow fell. He heard the crunch of bone splitting as fresh blood filled his throat, choking him. His breath was a gurgle that watered the ground with red foam. All about him was darkness.

And then, as if from a distance, Leman Kierstaad’s voice: “Are you ready?”

He could barely hear the answer over the roaring in his ears. The blazing pain. “Do it now?”

“The imprint’s best at the moment of death. Trying it later . . . that’s tricky.”

He tried to move his fingers. Couldn’t. Tried to feel his legs. No.

“How’s that?”

He was dying.

“You’ll leave in the morning, as he would have done. Go directly to the keep. If anyone asks why you cut the tour short, say it was based on classified information that I gave you. No one questions a Protector.”

“And then?”

Betrayed. They were all betrayed. The land had already been invaded, by creatures that hid behind human faces. No boats had to land. Not now. No armies would ever be seen. Nothing would be noticed . . . until it was too late.

“I want all your men out in those woods, searching. We have to find that girl. Turn the villages inside out if you have to, check every path, search every stream . . . she’s only a child, and she’s never been outside before. She can’t elude us forever.”

“But if she’s just a child—”

“She saw me,” the Kierstaad-voice hissed. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but she knew that something was wrong. Why else would she run away that very night, when she could never hope to survive on her own? I want her captured. I want her alive. I want to know what special power she has, that his Highness failed to anticipate . . .” The voice trailed off into a true hiss, too soft for Istram to hear. His blood was a roar in his ears a hot flood in his throat. The sounds of the world outside were fading. “Go north into this man’s lands”—something kicked him hard in the back and his body jerked, smearing blood on the floor—“and do what it takes to find her.”

“And if the villagers object to our search?”

“What do you care? They’re human.” The voice had become a predatory hiss. “If they get in your way, then kill them.”

Istram tried to cough. Failed. There was no room left for air in his lungs; everything was filled with blood.

“Just make sure you leave no witnesses,” the Kierstaad-voice cautioned. It was a voice filled with hate. A tone filled with hunger. It seeped down into the darkness that surrounded him, a last flicker of red in the gathering mists. Enough to inspire terror in the throbbing remnants of his soul.

I have to warn them, was Istram’s last thought. The Protector in him still clutched at life—insane, obsessed—even as his body shuddered in its dying. Have to get word to the others. Somehow . . .

And then even the terror expired, and there was only darkness.

16

They followed the stream bed south, though at times the footing was so bad that they had to lead the horses through the water, feeling their way through soaked leather soles. At least it isn’t winter, Damien thought, remembering their frozen trek through the rakhland mountains. What he tried not to think about was the fact that a few hundred miles closer to the southern ice cap and ten thousand feet higher up it might be every bit as unpleasant as it had been in the far north. And so when they spread out the maps—Tarrant’s, as always, and the few which Hesseth had managed to salvage from their ill-fated room in the Manor, he studied the geography every bit as carefully as the Hunter did, with an eye for the weather.

For a few nights they concentrated on putting as much distance between them and Mercia as possible. The horses gained energy quickly—much more so than Damien had expected—and to their relief the animals seemed happy to supplement their limited grain supply with a few grassy plants that grew on the banks of the stream. It wasn’t necessary for Tarrant to point out that without a reliable supply of travel feed they were going to have to limit their journey to regions that would support an equine appetite; Damien had thought of that the first day out. At least for the moment that seemed to be no problem. They would have to be careful when they chose their route, and keep a close eye on the vegetation.

One more thing to worry about.

They didn’t have many weapons, and that made the priest nervous. Hesseth had managed to rescue his sword and a few knives, and Tarrant still had his coldfire blade, but that didn’t mean much in a land where every citadel had firearms and even farmers might be armed with some kind of projectile weapon. On their second day from the city Damien tried to manufacture a bow from some supple saplings by the waterside, but though he tried every combination of wood and string that was available to him—short of gutting the horses for their sinew—he could achieve no combination that was satisfactory. At last in frustration he cast the bits of wood aside. They would have to purchase arms somewhere—a risky enterprise at best—or steal some, which was even less savory. Their prospects seemed darker and darker. If only they’d had time to prepare. If only he’d known when he spoke to Rozca how soon they would have to leave the city, so that he could have arranged a way to meet up-

Stop it. Now. You did the best you could. Deal with what you’ve got.

The gully deepened as they traveled south, and at last they thought it best to climb to higher ground while that was still possible. The scraggly trees flanking the stream had given way to a forest of sorts, but it was far from a healthy system. Stunted trees were spaced far enough apart that sunlight could seep down between them, which meant that every inch from the dirt up to the canopy had given rise to some sort of plant life. Which meant thick underbrush, often studded with thorns or coated with irritant. It was rough going, what with hacking through the underbrush to make way for their horses, and they had to stop often to rest. More than once Damien looked back the way they had come and winced; they were leaving a path so clearly marked that an army of blind men couldn’t have missed it. They would just have to hope that the many miles they had put in concealing their tracks in the stream’s running water would be enough to slow their pursuers down.

And, of course, their ruse with Rozca. God, there was so much riding on that . . .

At night Tarrant joined them. He had insisted that Damien and Hesseth continue traveling through some of the daylight hours, which meant that he spent the first few hours of evening searching them out and catching up. Damien tried to ignore the twisting in his gut in those hours. It was hard to forget what had happened in the rakhlands, when Tarrant’s failure to join them on time had resulted in days of torturous travel and nights of pain and fear. But there were no caves along their path, Tarrant had told them, which meant that he didn’t have the option of taking shelter with them. For once Damien didn’t question him. They seemed to have grown past petty questions of trust and annoyance into a relationship that was firmly rooted in their common need.

I trust him, Damien thought, studying the Hunter’s lean profile. Under the right circumstances I would trust him with my life. It was a new and not wholly comfortable feeling.

It was Tarrant who studied the currents of earth-fae that coursed about their feet, Tarrant who read meaning into their depth and their direction and a thousand other elements that Damien couldn’t begin to guess at. Sometimes he Worked his vision and tried to See as the Hunter did, but though he could observe the silver-blue currents he could not decipher their mysteries. As Tarrant explained when he voiced his frustration, a man who looked at the sky once a longmonth, and then only for a moment, might see that it was blue, but the man whose eyes were open twenty-four hours a day for a lifetime could distinguish a thousand hues in the very same heavens. So it was with them. And when Tarrant announced that the currents were shifting, that their response to his own malevolence was subtly changing, Damien took his word for the fact that someone or something must be causing it. He sure as hell couldn’t See the difference.

At last the scraggly woods gave way to forest proper, and they knew by that sign that they were now south of the inland sea, and past the last of its cities. Damien breathed a sigh of relief. In the lands of the Protectorates the Matrias’ word was still law, but sparse population and limited lines of communication made the risk of active pursuit considerably less. Or so he tried to convince himself, as they entered the depths of the Protectors’ woods.

Here there was a canopy proper, rich in verdant foliage. The light which filtered down to the ground was less than ideal for growth, which limited the number of plants that could take root in the shadowed earth. The horses trod this land with ease, and for the first time since leaving Mercia, Damien felt they were making good time.

To where? he thought. Toward what?

Near dawn each day they gathered around a minimal campfire and laid out their maps. Tarrant had begun to sketch in the patterns of power that he was observing, so that his own map of choice had begun to resemble the fae-charts back home. Tremors had struck three times while they traveled, and the surge of earth-fae which accompanied all earthquakes had given the Hunter even more information about the southern terrain. One of them had occurred so soon after sunset that Damien had had a vision of Tarrant trapped in mid-transformation, burned to a crisp by the untamable power of the earth. The Hunter had merely smiled when he spoke of it, but it seemed to Damien that he, too, was less confident, and before he transformed himself each morning the priest could see him carefully studying the currents, searching for that ever-so-slight irregularity which would warn of a quake in the making.

Southward, the maps said. Southward along the spine of a narrow, serpentine continent. Southward in a narrow channel between where the Protectors ruled and where barren mountains held sway. Or over those mountains at one of three passes, and into the lands of the Terata. Monsters, ghouls, or demonkin, they hunted mere humans for amusement and then rendered them down for meat. Or so the legends said. Damien—who had seen enough monstrosities in Tarrant’s cursed domain to last him a lifetime—had no desire to test them.

Southward to where the continent that sheltered them pointed like a slender finger to the islands beyond. On one of those—an immense land, the size of three landbound nations combined—Mercia’s enemies were said to shelter. An unholy army, gaining strength against the day when it would be ready to attack at last. The Church folk feared them enough to fortify the length of the coast with citadels, so that even in the most dismal, inhospitable reaches some Protector was waiting with his guards. The terrain itself had worked in their favor; there were so few places along the coast where an invading ship might harbor safely that it really was possible to guard it all. As long as the cities on the southernmost tip kept their own walls strong, and were ever vigilant . . .

That was where they were headed, that southern tip. Tarrant insisted. They must have more information on their enemy before making any move, and that was the best place to garner it. Though the cities there were linked to their northern neighbors by the Church, they were nominally independent, which meant that with a little luck—and a lot of careful Workings—the party might be able to supply itself with food, information, and weapons without getting killed in the process. Even more important, the currents which coursed northward in this region would be free from interference there, and Tarrant might be able to work a Knowing of considerable power. He was quick to remind them that while the currents had worked against them in the rakhlands, bringing their fae-scent to the enemy while hindering their own efforts, here they were downcurrent of the enemy. Information would flow to them like a scent on the wind, and they need exert no special power to interpret it. All they had to do was get upcurrent of the cities, so that the patterns were clear.

About damned time something worked in our favor, Damien thought. As he strapped his all-too-limited supplies onto his horse’s back, and settled his one weapon between his shoulders. We need all the help we can get.

Evening. The sun had set a while ago and the Core was too low for its light to make much difference; the forest air was a gloomy gray, and their tiny campfire did little to brighten it.

“Something’s coming,” Hesseth whispered.

They had found a stretch of clear ground to camp on, where no trees obscured their view of the night sky. The ground was hard and cold and uninviting, but being out from under the canopy meant Tarrant could find them that much faster. Now Damien wondered how wise that choice had been. It meant little that Tarrant found them quickly, if the enemy found them first. The rocky promontory gave them high ground, but the trees surrounding them would hide any attackers. Bad combination.

He brushed some loose dirt over the fire as he whispered to Hesseth, “Where?”

She shook her head. He saw her straining forward with her long, tufted ears, as if trying to focus on some distant sound. He listened as hard as he could himself, but heard nothing amiss. Which didn’t mean anything, of course. His human senses were considerably less acute than hers.

At least the rustlings and chirrupings which surrounded them hadn’t ceased. That meant that no large animal was prowling nearby, which might have frightened the forest’s smaller inhabitants into a wary silence. Damien took his sword in hand and tightened his fingers about the grip. If the smaller animals weren’t scared, that meant that nothing large was nearby . . . or that whatever was on the prowl had no flesh of its own for them to sense. How long had it been since they’d encountered anything demonic? The faeborn of this region had chosen to cluster about the city gates, leaving them thus far in peace. But there would come a time when they were far enough from the cities that whatever creatures man’s fear spawned might look closer to home for sustenance . . .

He drew in a deep breath and Worked his sight. For a moment the gray mist resisted, refusing to give way. Then the currents began to glow about him, the cool silver-gray of the earth-power-

And he cursed. Loudly. Rising to his feet with his sword in hand, feeling his fingers spasm fearfully about the grip. Hesseth rose beside him, and before she could ask what he had Seen, he told her, “Something very dark. Very hungry. It’s coming this way.” The last time he had sensed a power like this had been in Tarrant’s Forest, where the man’s own murderous instincts had tainted the earth-fae. Here the threat was more specific, but every bit as unwholesome. And as terrifying.

Speaking of Tarrant, where was he when you needed him?

“There.” He pointed to the south, where it seemed to him that the current was changing. Dark threads floated in the low-lying mist, pulsing as if in time to some inner heartbeat. He could smell its dark pollution, not with his nose but with his inner senses, and the reek of stale blood and rotting flesh made him want to vomit. He fought the sensation, even as he gathered himself to Work. Knowing as he did so that all his skill and Hesseth’s combined couldn’t stop something that powerful, not if it was truly intent upon devouring them.

They burst from the forest’s cover as the last words of the Shielding passed his lips, and by the time the earth-fae surrounding him had thickened in response, the first one was upon them. It was a horrible thing, a mockery of human shape with half its skull caved in and one arm dangling by a thread of flesh. He caught a glimpse of cracked bone as the creature came toward them, the green of rot rimming its many wounds. Damien reached out and pulled Hesseth toward him as the monster charged; the smaller his circle of influence was, the stronger he could make it. He heard her hiss as the creature charged, felt her stiffen against his side as it was caught in midair as if in gel, as it struggled to get through the thickening boundary to claw at the two of them. Behind it rushed others—so many others!—an army of horror, a veritable battalion of death incarnate that howled in anguish and hunger as it poured through the clearing, filling every inch of space within the trees. The horses squealed in terror as the faeborn creatures filled the clearing, but the monsters had no interest in equine souls; the stink of rotting flesh enveloped Damien as creature after creature thrust itself against the priest’s defensive Working, shredded flesh and maggot-ridden limbs scrabbling over the shell of earth-fae like so many insects. The priest had seen more frightening things in his life, but never anything more horrible; it took all his self-control not to close his eyes to shut the vision out.

There must have been hundreds of the creatures. Thousands. The sea of them seemed endless as it pounded against his hastily Worked defenses, each blow requiring one more bit of strength from him to balance it. He felt himself tiring, and fast. Could Hesseth help? he wondered. Was the power she used available at this moment, and could she Work it into some defensive pattern? If she could, then she would have, he told himself grimly. Streaks of blackened blood hung suspended in midair inches before his face, defining the limits of his power. Where had these things come from? What did they usually feed on, that would support so many? His sword-arm tensed as the wall of fae seemed to give before him, gritty claws raking the air no more than an inch from his face—and then he forced it back and it held, the black blood smoked and the monsters screamed and the reek of it, the terrible reek of it that came near to overwhelming him utterly, the stink that filled his nose and his mouth and burned his lungs when he breathed it in, so that it was all he could do not to gag and lose his concentration utterly . . .

“Look,” Hesseth said hoarsely. “They’re going!”

He dared a glance behind him in the direction she indicated. The creatures were indeed leaving the field of battle, disappearing among the trees on the far side of the clearing as quickly as they had arrived. Caught in the current of exodus, the ones who surrounded Damien and Hesseth screamed as they were swept away. In moments they, too, were past the tree line and into the forest, leaving only their blood and a fragment or two of flesh as a witness to their feverish attack.

For a long minute Damien stood still, his heart pounding against his rib cage, Hesseth pressed against his side. The warm musk of her scent, familiar to him after months of travel, helped clear his head. After a moment he dared to breathe deeply, and loosened his hold on her shoulder. After another moment—a very long, very tense moment—he dared to let his Shielding disperse. Bits of flesh and flakes of blood fell to the ground as the fae which he had shaped resumed its natural course. All demonic stuff, of course; he probably would cease to see it as soon as he let his special vision fade. But for now he needed all his senses. No telling when the creatures might return. No telling when something worse might follow.

They weren’t after us, he thought numbly. Or anyone in particular. We just happened to be in their way. He thought of the soldierfish of the Lower Arterac, the army spiders of the Cameroon Delta. It didn’t matter to either of those species what stood in their way, provided it was edible and stood in one place long enough to be eaten. But both those species lived in rich ecospheres, where food existed in abundance. What would thousands of demonlings do for sustenance in the wilderness, where human abodes were few and far between?

And what brought them into existence in the first place? he wondered.

A shadow fell over their campsite as something passed overhead. He didn’t have to look up to know what it was. Tarrant circled several times before coming to earth, as if he were uncertain about trusting his flesh to transformation. Or perhaps he was just scouting for enemies.

As soon as he had landed and regained his human form, Damien told him, “We were attacked—”

“I saw,” Tarrant assured him.

He pictured the Hunter soaring comfortably overhead while the creatures attacked them and glared. “You could have helped.”

“It’s no easy thing to Work the fae while in a nonhuman form, Reverend Vryce. Nor is there much earth-power to manipulate at that height. But rest assured, if your own defense had failed, I would have attempted . . . something.”

“What did you see?” Hesseth asked.

Tarrant considered for a moment. What the rakh-woman had asked for was not a recap of the obvious, but his interpretation of what had gone on. “They were newborn,” he said at last. “Still riding on the force of their creation, not yet accustomed to feeding off humankind. One night old, I would guess. If not younger than that.”

Something in his tone made Damien look up sharply at him. “You’ve seen this kind of thing before?”

The Hunter nodded. “Several times. Ulandra comes to mind, right after the tsunami broke through her sea wall and drowned the entire city. And the fields of Yor, when Hasting’s fortress fell at last and the invading army slaughtered everyone within. And I seem to recall a particularly nasty horde being created when the Neoduke of Moray snapped under siege and slaughtered his entire court for the cookpot.” He smiled darkly. “Unfortunately, his Grace had no idea that the constructs birthed by his victims’ dying screams devoured every soldier outside his gates, and he killed himself in the morning. Which rather negated the point of the whole exercise.”

For a moment Damien just stared at him. He struggled to find his voice. “Mass murder?”

“That, or some natural disaster. Just as the terminal terror of one man can give birth to a demonling, so can the anguish of a thousand souls give birth to . . . what you saw. And you were very fortunate,” he added. “They weren’t yet crazed with hunger, as they will be in a few nights. Nor have they developed real intelligence yet, as the faeborn are wont to do.”

“They came from that direction.” Hesseth pointed. “Does that mean-?”

The Hunter nodded. “The source will be there. Less than a night’s journey from us, if I read things correctly.” He looked at Damien and said dryly, “I suppose you’ll want to go to it?”

He hesitated. “It’s along our route,” he said at last. “If there’s some danger there—”

“As there certainly will be.”

“Then we need to find out what it is. Right?” When the Hunter didn’t answer, he pressed, “Don’t you agree?”

The Hunter smiled faintly. It was a tense expression, but not without humor.

“If I didn’t,” he asked dryly, “would it make a bit of difference?”

The village was deserted-

Or so it seemed.

They entered the main gate silently, leading their horses behind them. There were no faeborn predators fluttering about the gate-wards, as there would have been outside any city. It was wrong, terribly wrong. As he passed the warded lintels he noticed that the very air seemed leached of sound, eerily silent. No insects chirruped in the underbrush, nor was there the rustling of any tiny herbivore. In the still night air he could hear himself breathing, and the sound seemed unnaturally loud.

“Can you smell it?” Hesseth whispered. The place demanded whispering.

He lifted his nose to the air and tested the breeze for content. At first he smelled nothing worse than a vague miasma, the kind of damp unwholesomeness common in swamps and mires. Then the wind shifted slightly, and he caught a whiff of something else. Decaying meat. Drying blood. Death.

They moved into the village warily, senses alert for any sign of movement. There was none. The breeze blew a few loose leaves across the street, then stilled. Nothing else.

“Tarrant?” he whispered.

The Hunter looked about, his pale eyes narrowed in concentration. “No life,” he said at last. “No life at all. Nor unlife,” he added quickly. An acknowledgment that his own unique state reminded them of questions they might otherwise not think to ask.

Damien looked at the buildings which flanked the narrow street. Simple wood and brick construction, painted long ago in colors that were neither too bright nor too dull; it was hard to tell anything about the people here just from their facades. “We should look inside.”

Hesseth hissed a soft agreement.

“If you want,” the Hunter said softly, “I’ll stay with the horses.”

Damien looked up sharply at him, wondering if there was something here he didn’t want to see. But no, his eyes were fixed on the earth-fae before him, and the silver intensity that glittered in their depths told the priest that he had every intention of finding out what had happened.

Taking two of the small lanterns with them, Damien and Hesseth entered the nearest house.

The door was unlocked, and swung open at their touch. Two feet back it jammed against something, and Damien had to press his weight against it in order to force it open.

A chest. Someone had pushed a heavy chest up against the door, hoping to keep it shut.

Which meant someone was probably still inside.

His first instinct was to call out some reassurance, in case someone was still alive. But while the Hunter might be wrong in other things, Damien trusted his judgment utterly in matters of death. And so he picked his way carefully through the house’s sitting room, over bits of furniture and decor that seemed to have been scattered by some violent movement. The smell grew thicker as he moved toward the back of the house. At the far end of the room was a heavy wooden door, slightly ajar. He walked warily up to it and peeked inside.

No life, the Hunter had told them.

There were five bodies in the bedroom, strewn about like damaged and discarded toys. One lay on its back across a window seat, and Damien could just make out the look of tortured horror on the young man’s face. That, and the reek of urine and fecal matter which filled the small room, told Damien that death had been neither slow nor secretive in this place.

He looked at them a moment longer, but couldn’t determine the cause of death. Let Tarrant discover that with his Knowing. He backed out of the small room and shut the door gently, feeling his gut unknot just a little as the powerful stench was closed away. Flies buzzed past his face as he forced himself to breathe deeply. Once. Twice. Again.

He looked about for Hesseth. He didn’t see her in the sitting room, but there was another door open at its far end. As he made his way toward it he heard her hiss softly; the sound was more anguished than hostile.

He found her in a back room, kneeling in a narrow doorway. Looking beyond her Damien saw the fixtures of a primitive bathroom, the walls and floor awash with blood.

“What happened?” he whispered.

She pointed to where a pile of bodies lay in the far corner, huddled together like a pile of broken dolls. Four children, all pale and lifeless. By their feet lay another body, that of an older woman.

He squeezed his way into the small room, casting his lantern light on the bodies. There was a dark gash visible on the neck of one of the children, and he pushed the small head gently to one side in order to get a better look. The cut was deep and long and there was no question about its being the cause of death. Another child was positioned so that its neck was also visible; he studied that also, nodding to himself as the grisly pattern made itself clear. Then he stopped by the woman’s body long enough to see the two deep cuts that grooved her wrists, the blood-covered knife in her hand. And he ushered Hesseth out.

“She killed them,” he said quietly. “Most likely they were her own children, and she killed them to save them from . . . that.” He nodded back toward the room he had inspected, not willing to put the horror into words. Not just yet. “A cut to the carotid artery is a quick and almost painless death. She knew what she was doing.”

“What happened here?” the rakh-woman whispered.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Hesseth. But it didn’t happen quickly, that’s for sure.”

The relatively clean air of the streets was a welcome relief after the poisoned closeness of the house’s interior; he breathed deeply when they exited, trying to clear his lungs.

Then he looked up at Tarrant, a question in his eyes. The Neocount said nothing, but nodded toward a building across the street from them. Meeting Hall, the sign over the door said. “In there,” he directed them. His tone communicated nothing.

Filled with more than a little misgiving, Damien and Hesseth moved toward the building. The smell was stronger there, sick and forbidding. His stomach was tight with dread as he turned the worn brass handle and pushed it open, as he stepped forward to look inside-

Oh, my God.

He was back out on the street again, reeling as though something had struck him in the face. The afterimage of the meeting hall’s contents was burned into his vision, shadows and highlights of utter horror sculpted by the lantern’s light. Bodies that were nailed to the wooden floor and gutted. Intestines wound about a desk leg, their owner still attached. More brutal, malevolent destruction than he had ever seen in one place before. And on every face, in every staring eye, a look of such utter horror that there was no question in Damien’s mind that these people had been alive while they were eviscerated. Perhaps being tortured in a careful progression so that future victims could see their coming fate, writhing terrified in their bonds as body after body was vivisected . . .

It was too much. Too much. He leaned over and vomited in the street, bitter fluids surging from his gut in violent revulsion. Again and again, until his stomach was more than empty. Still it spasmed, and his mouth burned with the fluids of his revulsion.

He didn’t look at Tarrant. He didn’t want to see those eyes—so cool, so utterly inhuman—fixed on his helplessness. He didn’t want to acknowledge what he knew deep inside, which was that even a horror such as this would fail to move the Hunter. Had Gerald Tarrant not done a similar thing to his own wife and children? Would he not gladly do worse in the future, if he felt that survival demanded it?

Instead Damien looked for Hesseth. She was nowhere to be found. He was just about to start worrying when she staggered out of the meeting hall doorway, one hand clenched shut about something. Under the angry red patches of her perpetual sunburn her face was drained of all living color, and her mouth hung slack as if she lacked the strength to shape whatever words she needed.

She walked to him. Slowly. Like him, she refused to meet Tarrant’s eyes. When she was no more than two feet away her hand uncurled, slowly. Flakes of blackened blood clung to her palm, making it hard to see what she held. A thin, curving object with shreds of flesh still adhering to its wider end. As if it had been torn from some living thing so violently that the flesh itself had given way.

It was a claw.

She gave him a moment to study it, flexing her own claws so that he might compare. The curve was the same, the composition, the proportion—everything but the size, which was slightly larger. There was no question what manner of creature it had come from.

“My people did this,” she whispered hoarsely. “Rakh.” Her hand started to tremble so violently that she had to close it again, rather than drop the grisly thing. “Why?” she whispered. “Why?”

He drew her to him because she seemed to need it, and carefully, delicately, folded his arms around her. For a moment he was afraid that she might respond badly, that her natural aversion to humankind might overpower her need for comfort. But she buried herself against his chest and shivered violently, so he held her tightly. No tears came from those amber eyes; the rakhene anatomy did not allow for it. But she trembled with a grief that was every bit as genuine and as passionate as that which a human woman might know, and he did his best to comfort her.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

Tarrant stirred. “Let’s collect some weapons and then get out of here.”

Damien looked up at him. The pale eyes contained neither disdain nor impatience, but something that in another life might have been called sympathy. “It may be our only chance,” the Hunter pointed out.

After a minute Damien nodded. He disentangled Hesseth from his embrace, gently. “Come on,” he said softly. “We need supplies. Let’s find them and then we can get out of here.”

“What if they come back?”

He looked up at Tarrant, then back toward the meeting hall. “I don’t think they will,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing here for them. Not anymore.”

And because she could shed no tears, he did so. A few drops squeezed from the corners of his eyes, a monument to her grief. He hated himself for showing such weakness in front of Tarrant—and hated Tarrant for not doing so himself, for being so far removed from the sphere of human emotions that not even this outrageous slaughter could move him.

“Come on,” he muttered. Forcing himself to move again. Forcing himself to function. “Let’s get on with it.”

Hours later. How many? Time and distance were a featureless blur, each minute blending into the one that followed, each step shrouded in a fog of mourning. Perhaps yards. Perhaps miles. Perhaps half a night. Who could say?

At last they dismounted. The chill light of dawn was just stirring in the eastern sky; not enough to make Tarrant take cover yet, but enough to give him warning. They made their camp mechanically, pitching the tent that Hesseth had pieced together from their extra blankets. Not using the camping supplies that they had picked up in the village. Not ready for that yet.

When the small fire was burning and the horses had been tended to and water had been gathered from a nearby stream, then the words came. Slowly. With effort.

“Why?” Hesseth whispered.

“Your people are known for a fierce hatred of humankind,” Tarrant offered. It was the first time he had spoken since they’d left the village. “Is it so incredible that their hatred has found an outlet here?”

She glared at him. “My people aren’t like that.”

Tarrant said nothing.

She turned away. Her furred hands clenched. “My people would happily kill all humans. Just like they wanted to kill you, when you came into our territory. But that’s different. That’s . . .”

“Better?” the Hunter asked dryly. “Cleaner?”

She turned on him; her amber eyes were blazing. “Animals kill for food, or defense. Or to rid themselves of something undesirable. They don’t torture other creatures for the sheer pleasure of seeing them suffer. That’s a human thing.”

“Maybe your people have become more human than they know.”

“Stop it,” Damien snapped. At Tarrant. “Stop it now.”

For a moment there was silence. The crackling of the fire. The soft breathing of the horses.

“We knew we were fighting something with the ability to corrupt men’s souls,” the priest said. “Didn’t we see that in Mercia? Men and women who meant well, who had devoted their lives to a beneficent God . . . yet who would murder their fellow humans without a moment of remorse, and consign helpless children to a ritual of torture.” God, it hurt to remember all that. He fought to keep his voice steady. “I think what we’ve seen tonight is that he—or she, or it—has done the same to your people.” He watched as Hesseth lowered her head, trying to make his voice as gentle as it could become. “He did have something to start with, after all. How much work would it be to twist a rakhene soul, so that the desire to kill one’s enemy became the desire to torture him to death?”

“It isn’t a rakh thing,” she hissed softly. “It isn’t the way we work.”

He waited a moment before he answered. “That may have changed,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, Hesseth. But it’s the truth. God alone knows how long he’s had to operate, but it’s clear that he’s had enough time to influence your people. To influence both our peoples,” he added quickly. “God alone knows why . . .”

“Yes,” Tarrant agreed. “That’s a good question, isn’t it? A demon might feed on that kind of hatred, or on the pain it engendered, or on any other emotion that was a consequence of the system . . . but only with humans, not the rakh. Why corrupt a native species? No demon could gain strength from that.”

“Are you sure?” Damien asked.

“Absolutely. The faeborn draw their strength from man because he creates them; they rely on him for sustenance. What good is a rakhene soul to them? Its nature is as alien to demonkind as we are to Erna. They can’t digest it.”

“So the purpose is something else.”

Tarrant nodded. “And you forget something else.”

Hesseth stiffened. Damien looked up sharply at him.

“The rakh who came to this continent must have done so over ten thousand years ago, when the land bridge in the north was still intact. Nothing else can explain their appearance on both continents. And it’s clear that when the fae began to alter them, making them more like humanity, both groups were affected. Why not? This planet is a unified whole; the same currents course over all of it. But the hatred?” He shook his head, his expression grim. “That wasn’t a physical change, but a social response to the Crusades, a western phenomenon. Why would the rakh who lived here—who had not even come in contact with humankind at that point—share such feelings? Why should the masters of their own continent hate a species they had never even seen? It makes no sense.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That the rakh here were taught to hate. It’s all part of some greater plan, designed to corrupt those who live here. Human and rakh alike.”

“Why?” Hesseth demanded, her voice shaking slightly.

Tarrant shook his head in frustration. “I wish I knew. Tonight’s discovery raises so many questions . . . and I don’t know where to begin answering them. I’m sorry.”

He stood. The sky was light enough now that it illuminated him from above, casting a shadowy halo about his hair. “What we do know is that the enemy’s cause is more complicated than we at first suspected . . . and likewise his tools are more varied than we anticipated. We should be very wary.” He looked at the graying sky with regret. “I hate to leave you now—”

“We understand,” Damien said.

“Keep careful guard. I don’t think anyone will bother to come back to the village . . . but it’s dangerous to anticipate our enemy when we don’t understand the game he’s playing. I wish now that we had obliterated our tracks,” he murmured, “at least through the town. But it’s too late for that now.”

Damien turned to Hesseth. “Can you—”

She shook her head. “Not from this distance. I’m sorry.”

“We need clear currents,” Tarrant said. “I need to get farther south, so I can Know him with nothing standing between us. Without understanding his motives . . .” He shook his head. “Our only hope lies in comprehending what he wants, what he’s done here.”

“And what he is,” Damien supplied.

“Yes,” the Hunter agreed. Stepping back so that he might transform himself without the power of his coldfire Working hurting his companions. “What he is. That, most of all.”

The dawn sky was gray now, with a hint of pale blue at the lower edge. Tarrant looked at it once as if gauging the sun’s progress, then studied the earth-fae at his feet for any warning of imminent seismic activity. Evidently there was none. The Hunter stood up straight, bracing himself for the painful effort of transformation.

And then the coldfire flared, and the broad wings rose into the sky. And there were only the two of them left, and the dawn, and the silence.

17

“Protector Iseldas?”

The creature who wore that form looked up, noted the arrival of one of his own kind, and nodded. “Come in. Close the door. Carefully,” he added, indicating with a glance the hallway outside.

The other looked carefully up and down the corridor, testing its privacy with more-than-human senses. At last he grunted in satisfaction and entered the firelit chamber. The heavy double doors swung shut with a soft thud and the lock dropped noisily into place

“Did you find her?” the mock-Iseldas demanded.

“Not yet.”

“Well, then? What?” His nerves were on edge from dealing with the Iseldas clan all day. Petty human underlings, with petty human concerns. Someday they would all be gone. Someday this region would be wiped clean of them forever, so that a more worthy species might take their place. “I told you to stay out until you find her.”

“We found something.” He hesitated before stepping forward, as if unsure of the protocol. He had been far more comfortable in Kierstaad’s domain, where all the house staff had been replaced; here, with only a few of them amidst two dozen true humans, the constant strain of his disguise was wearing his patience thin. “We thought you should see it.”

He handed the imposter—call him Iseldas, he chided himself, learn to do it—the paper in his hand. All folded and dirty and covered with blood, as befit a drawing from the village.

Ah, the village. He savored the memory with glee. So much of their life was spent pretending to be human, pretending to be civilized, that it was good to let one’s animal soul rear its head at last. The Prince would not understand, perhaps, nor condone such wholesale slaughter—on grounds of efficiency, of course, rather than compassion—but these creatures here who made the rules, these men of his own race who lived and breathed the lives of humans, they understood. They knew that the price of such a grand subterfuge was an occasional indulgence.

Leave no witnesses, Kierstaad had said. They hadn’t.

He watched while Iseldas—the new Iseldas—unfolded the travel-worn paper. Watched while he scrutinized the crude ink drawings on its surface. His brow furrowed in concentration, but he said nothing. At last he held up the paper. “What are these?”

“Tracks, we believe.” He pointed to the first drawing—a precise reproduction of the street outside the Meeting Hall—and then the sketches below, which divided up the cryptic shapes into something resembling hoofmarks. “Three animals, all similar. Very large.”

The first set was crescent-shaped, sharp-edged, deeply incised into the earth. The second had been made by feet with three-clawed toes, the center digit slightly larger than the other two. The third might have been of their offspring, with a half-moon shape flanked by two deep scratches. Figures indicated how far apart the marks were.

“What are they?” Iseldas demanded.

“We don’t know. But they were accompanied by human footsteps.”

Iseldas looked up sharply. “You said all the villagers were dead.”

“All of them were. These must have come from elsewhere. You see that their animals are foreign—”

“And large,” he hissed. The reaction was not one of human reason, but of animal uncertainty; the thought of the foreign beast’s size and bulk was as unnerving as a hostile odor. “Any other signs?”

He shook his head.

“You’re sure the human footsteps came after?”

There was no need to ask him after what? They both understood what he meant. “I can’t swear they weren’t there when we cleansed the town. Why stop to check a dirt road for mere footsteps? There must have been thousands. But these flanked the animal tracks exactly, and I’m fairly sure those weren’t there before. They’re odd enough that we would have noticed.”

And threatening enough, Iseldas thought. An animal which left tracks like that could weigh over a ton. That was rare in these parts, and decidedly dangerous. The hooves looked deadly, too, large enough and solid enough to crush bone. All in all, the thought of such a beast free in the woods—his woods—made him feel like his fur was standing on end.

“I want you out after this,” he commanded. “Find out where these tracks lead, what’s making them—”

“What about the girl?”

He hissed as he breathed in. What about the girl? Kierstaad said she would have gone north, but he frankly doubted it. Most likely the local carnivores had gotten to her, and all that was left for them was to locate her bones. If they hadn’t been buried somewhere for a winter snack.

But duty was duty. The Undying Prince had taught them that.

“Keep searching for her,” he growled. “But get at least two or three on this trail, too.” He looked down at the paper in his hands, at the odd shapes that could not be—but clearly were—some animal’s tracks. “I’ll send this on to the Matrias. See what they make of it. Do we still have birds?”

“For Mercia and Penitencia.”

“Mercia. That’s where the last letter came from. Maybe this has something to do with the westerners.” A sudden spark of excitement stirred within him. What if these tracks were connected to the outsiders, somehow? What if the western-born fugitives hadn’t gone by sea after all, but by land, and he was able to capture them? There’d be reward aplenty for that move, once the northern lands were taken. He growled softly in anticipation, considering it. “Send the question to Mercia.”

“Right away.”

“And also . . . do we have a bird for Kierstaad?”

“Why not send a messenger? It’s right across the—”

“I don’t want to waste the people or the time. Do we have a bird?”

He blinked. “I think so. Why?”

“Send word that we need more support. Send word that I want enough people to replace Iseldas’ staff. Totally. This business of having to be on guard against eavesdroppers, of the constant pretense . . . it wears. It wears badly. I want the support to establish myself here properly, before the Protector’s wife comes home.” And he muttered, “That’ll be challenge enough.”

“You going to mate with her?” he hissed softly. There was an undercurrent of challenge in his voice.

Iseldas’ fur began to rise. Or rather, it would have risen had he still possessed any true fur. But all he had now was a sparse covering of human hair, useless for protection or display. How did the humans stand it?

“Watch yourself,” he warned. Making his voice as much a growl as the human speech apparatus would permit. “I’m in charge here. You want to fight, let’s get on with it. Otherwise watch your tongue.”

The other male growled low in his throat, and for a minute Iseldas thought he might indeed make a move toward him. All his masculine instincts were afire, but despite his best effort he could manage no physical display. The fur wasn’t there to stand erect. The claws weren’t there to be bared. Even his teeth had been transformed, so that his snarl was shorn of its visual display.

How he hated this transformation! They might as well cut his balls off as make him wear human flesh. The result was much the same.

But the other male was likewise handicapped, and Iseldas could see him struggling with his uncooperative body. Though he might have continued the challenge in his native form, he was clearly not comfortable with doing so on human terms. At last he stepped back ever so slightly, and delicately inclined his head. The gesture was awkward, but it communicated.

“Now get to work,” Iseldas snapped. “And spare me your insults in the future.”

The other male growled softly, but he did leave as ordered. Iseldas was glad of it. He had no doubt that an out—and-out battle for dominance would have revealed their nature to the true humans, no matter what story they made up to cover it. Humans might be stupid, but they weren’t blind.

You’ll have to face him someday. Either that, or let him form a pack of his own. He’s too strong willed to play the second male forever.

He smiled slightly, remembering his own rise through the ranks. The fever of ambition that had burned within him like a fire, consuming all reason. The heady sense of invulnerability that accompanied each new compat. He had dominated most of the males in the Kierstaad domain—usually by intimidating them, sometimes by actual combat—and he might have taken on Kierstaad himself, if not for this new assignment. Little wonder that the mock-Protector had chosen him for this role. He hoped that when his time came he could make a similarly wise decision.

It’s never easy being the prime male, he consoled himself. As he sipped from the wine in the goblet at hand, and dreamed that it was human blood.

18

They divided up their new supplies the following evening. It was hard for Damien to handle the village items without feeling somehow that he was also grasping their tragedy. It was hard not to remember those twisted, tormented bodies as he sorted through the items that had once belonged to their owners.

You would approve of our mission, he promised them silently. With these weapons we can perhaps destroy the evil that brought you down. With these we can keep it from killing others.

Dried food in quantity, and grain for the horses. Knives for hunting, skinning, and killing. Several small handguns and their ammunition. Three versions of a larger, more primitive weapon that was unlike anything Damien had seen before. He hefted one to his shoulder, noting that its stock was not unlike that of a springbolt, his projectile weapon of choice. But instead of a smooth, barreled head it had a construction resembling a bow in miniature, set perpendicular to the line of fire. An awkward construction, Damien noted, but it seemed to work; the few practice shots he and Hesseth took with it launched the smooth, metal-tipped bolts across a clearing and inches deep into the bark of a tree. Not bad. It didn’t have the balance of a springbolt, of course, and one could eviscerate oneself trying to use the butt as an impact weapon, but it was immeasurably better than what they’d had. They checked all the working parts twice, divided up five boxes of bolts, and felt considerably safer than they had the night before. Then there were the guns. Tarrant had brought them, along with the ammunition and priming agents they required. Damien would just as soon have left them there. Only three houses in the village had had them, which indicated to him that the firearms were rare outside the great cities. For good reason. He watched as Tarrant cleaned the fine metal parts with the hooks and wire brushes he had also gathered, until he seemed satisfied. It was the kind of care a normal man might give such a weapon: not only to make sure it worked, but to make sure the user knew that it would work. On a world where doubt too easily became disaster, anything less would be suicide.

“Can’t you just Work it into efficiency?” He demanded of Tarrant. Anxious to be moving again, to put the devastation of last night’s discovery even farther behind them.

“I could Work the metal parts,” the Hunter assured him. “—and indeed, I am doing that. But as for the rest . . .” He blew at a touchhole softly, spraying fine black powder across the stock. “I think you forget my limitations. I have no power over fire, or anything that manipulates fire—and this falls into that category.”

“You mean you can’t stop it from misfiring?” Hesseth asked.

What an incredible concept! That this man who could move mountains, who could and did shift whole weather systems in an instant—who had redefined the very parameters of death, at least as they related to his own person—could not assure that a simple mechanical instrument would function as it should, any more than your average man in the street.

“I can’t,” he agreed, confirming the incredible. “But nor will I cause it to misfire, as the doubts of so many might do.” He brushed off the last of the guns and laid it down beside the others. They gleamed golden on the dark grass, reflecting the Corelight. “They’re not my weapon of choice—as you well know—but if our enemy is armed with guns, then we should at least have the option of meeting him on similar ground.” He looked at Damien. “Have you ever used one of these?”

“Once.” He still remembered the kick of the carved wooden grip in his hand, the dread feeling—just for an instant—that something he had sparked off was too fast and too secretive for him to control. His master had tsk tsked, and announced with solemn finality, “Some men are born to handle firearms. You, Vryce, are clearly not one of them. But with practice and knowledge I have every confidence that you can bring this weapon under control, so that it’s deadly only to your enemies.”

Practice and knowledge. Only there were so many other things to see and learn and do at the same time, and besides, he liked the sword. It was a pleasing sensation to launch an attack at an enemy and feel the heavy swing carry through like an extension of his arm, the sharp steel resonating with triumph as it cut through living flesh, blood dripping along its edge . . . or so he imagined. The truth was that he’d been just fifteen at the time, and the most he’d done was batter a jousting block with hardwood blades, and once—just once—helped dispatch a low-order, ghoul that was cruising the visitor’s dormitory. Which he’d done with a knife, not with a sword, but the theory was much the same. The point was, steel he understood. Steel he trusted. Black powder was more like . . . well, like magic. “They’re all yours,” he assured Tarrant, and he thought he saw the Hunter smile.

There was a slight tremor then, but the Hunter declared it to be of no consequence. Harmonic tremors, he explained, which felt like small-scale earthquakes but didn’t disturb the earth-fae nearly so drastically. Damien did note that there had been five distinct tremors since they’d started traveling south, and doubtless many more too subtle to them to detect. Neither he nor Tarrant had said it in so many words, but the truth was clear to both of them: this wasn’t a safe region to Work in. Tarrant was taking a chance with his transformations, but at least that was after careful study of the currents. They’d better be careful in the heat of battle, though, lest the energies unleashed by a shifting planet burn one of them—or both—to a crisp. Damien had already seen the fae sear through a woman’s brain in the rakhlands, and he had no desire to experience it any more directly.

They loaded the horses and began to ride. Damien and Hesseth had allowed enough time for resting that both felt somewhat refreshed, though nightmares had made sleep a touch—and-go affair. They were lucky that Tarrant was with them, Damien reflected; otherwise the powers at large might well manifest their fear and their horror right back at them. But the Hunter’s presence seemed to discourage fear-ghouls from forming, and most of the region’s extant terrors preferred to stay a good distance away.

They continued south. The horses were stronger now, and the terrain more obliging than it had been; considering the near-darkness that Tarrant’s schedule resigned them to, they made good time. Once they neared a village—its presence was proclaimed not only by its lights and its sounds but by the dozens of silent wraiths who flitted about its gates, hunger curling from them like tendrils of black mist—and they remained in the vicinity just long enough to read the currents that flowed through it, to see that no horror had just taken place or was just about to. But the village was peaceful, its people contentedly sequestered for the night, and Damien had to fight back his urge to warn them. In truth, what could a stranger say to them that they would believe? And what would he warn them about? They didn’t really know what happened, did they?

Once soon after, when the moonlight flashed down upon them, he gazed upon the Hunter’s profile. He knows what happened, the priest thought. He Saw. And it made a cold shiver course up his spine, to think that one of them had actually witnessed the slaughter.

I wouldn’t share that Knowing for anything.

The next village was directly in their path; they had to circle to the east to avoid it. That course led them down a rocky slope to a river, perhaps an extension of the stream they had followed so long ago. Had the night been dark they might have waited until morning before crossing, but Casca was full overhead by that time and Prima’s crescent added its share of light from the east; they waded their horses through what looked like the calmest stretch of water, and outside of riding calf-deep in the ice cold mountain runoff made the crossing without mishap.

They stopped at the first likely site they found and toweled themselves and their mounts dry. The night breeze was cool but not unpleasant, at least not when one was dry. As he wrung out his boots, Damien noticed Tarrant studying the land before them.

“What is it?”

“The currents,” he murmured. “They’re . . . odd.”

His tone was enough to make Damien tense up; he saw Hesseth’s ears prick forward. “Odd how?”

The Hunter held up a hand to silence him. Damien could see his pale eyes focusing on some point just beyond them, perhaps where the earth-fae surged over some promontory and became particularly Workable. After a moment he stiffened. A soft hiss escaped his lips.

“We’re being followed,” he said quietly.

He heard Hesseth curse in her rakhene tongue. For himself, he muttered angrily that it had all seemed too good to be true. The Hunter waved them silent again, his eyes fixed on fae-wrought pictures that only he could see. His companions waited.

“They found the tracks. They’re following them. They’re not sure who we are, or what we’re mounted on . . . damn,” he hissed. “They have information. Real information. And they’re organized.”

“Villagers?” Damien dared. Feeling a cold churning in his gut as he asked. He knew what the answer would be.

“We should be so lucky.” The Hunter’s expression was grim. “Not villagers, no. And I think . . . maybe not human.”

For a moment the words hung between them, impaled upon the stillness of the air.

“You’re not sure?”

He shook his head, frustrated. “They’re north of us, which means I have to fight the current to read anything. In addition there’s some extra unclarity, perhaps an Obscuring of some kind, perhaps . . .” He shook his head, clearly frustrated. “They don’t seem to have Workers with them. Yet I sense power. Something quiescent . . . maybe a Warding? Hard to say.”

“Which means what?” Hesseth demanded. That the fine points of human sorcery meant nothing to her was clear from her tone.

“It means we move.” Soft hair glimmered in the double moonlight as he turned to face her; his eyes were shadowed, unreadable. “We move fast. It means we think about some way to Obscure our presence, even though they already know where we are—which makes such a Working very difficult,” he added. “It means we think about the obviousness of our route, and finding a defensible shelter, and the possibility of ambush-” He let the last sentence hang in the air unfinished, with all its threat intact.

“It means the good times are over,” Damien said dryly.

“Assst!” Hesseth’s eyes sparkled darkly. “Is that what they were?”

“Perhaps we should consider crossing the mountains,” Tarrant told them. “Precisely because it is a more difficult route.”

“They’re behind us,” Damien responded “They haven’t got horses or any near equivalent, so if we make good time—”

“You’re not listening,” the Hunter said softly. The threat in his voice was all the more powerful for being so delicately voiced. “I said they have information. That means they got it from somewhere. That means that some kind of network is operating.”

It took him a minute for the implications of that to sink in. “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit.”

“We know this coast is lined with Protectorates, whose only purpose is to seek out and destroy enemy forces. If they’ve truly been alerted, do you think we can outrun them? Every border we pass means a new army poised in waiting. I don’t like it,” he told them. “Even with all of us together it’s too dangerous, and with the nights as short as they are . . .” There was no need for him to continue. The thought of facing the Protectorates’ legions was bad enough; the thought of facing them in the daylight hours, without Tarrant’s power beside them, was truly daunting.

“What do you suggest?” Hesseth asked.

He gestured toward the south. “For now, continue as we’ve been doing. We won’t have another option for a while. Between your skills and mine we can probably Obscure our trail, but it wouldn’t hurt to stick to rocky ground. It’s always hard to Obscure something once it’s been noticed.”

“And then?”

“The map indicates a pass some forty miles to the south of here. That could be anything from a true break in the mountains to a single ridge which is slightly less daunting than its neighbors. I suggest we take it. It would be easier for me to leave signs that we had continued south than it would be to simply make our tracks disappear. By the time they catch on and backtrack we’ll be put of the Protectorates and truly Obscured. Of course, if we decided to kill whatever was following us—or even just take a look at it—such a region would be ideal for entrapment.”

“That works both ways,” Hesseth reminded him. “What if they anticipate us?”

“Unlikely,” the Hunter responded. “Think about it. They can’t be sure that we know about their pursuit, and the route just west of the mountains—which we’ve been taking—is quick and easy. Why would we change? Also . . .” He glanced at Damien. “There are the Terata. What small party of humans wouldn’t prefer the threat of a simple pursuit to a land filled with bloodthirsty demons?”

“That’s a very good point,” Damien noted.

A faint expression—it might have been a smile—flashed ever so briefly across the Hunter’s face. “I’m far more comfortable with the concept of demons than with an armed pursuit. Demons at least are unlikely to attack in the daylight.”

“So you’re comfortable with demons,” Damien snapped “What about us?”

The pale eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “Do you see a viable alternative?”

He bit his lip, considering. At last he muttered, “No, dammit. But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“He’s right, though.” Hesseth’s voice was low. “He can handle demons. And most of them won’t care about me. Besides—”

“And I’m lunch. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“We’ll protect you,” she promised. Smiling just a little.

He looked at her, then at Tarrant. Surely it was his own imagination that perceived an expression of smugness on that aristocratic visage. Or was it challenge?”

“I don’t know.” He directed his words at Tarrant. “The last time I made a decision like this I wound up getting stuck with you.”

With a sigh he hooked his foot into the stirrup and hoisted himself onto the horse’s back. Already the saddle felt natural to him, as if he had spent the last half-year riding, not sailing. A marked improvement.

“What the hell,” he muttered. “I was getting bored anyway. Let’s do it.”

19

The figure coalesced out of the midnight air, drawing its very substance from the darkness. All about it crystal tinkled, the delicate wrought-glass leaves of Miranda Kierstaad’s last creation. The figure heard nothing. In the west, where it gazed, Domina’s slim crescent was being swallowed by an ink-black roofline; stone crenellations cut into the lunar brilliance like a hundred tiny bitemarks. The figure saw nothing. Inside the keep there was commotion now, as the guard who had first seen the apparition searched hastily for his master. The figure knew nothing. Nor did it stir when the mock-Kierstaad entered the crystalline garden, for its maker had not known which of the many males it sent out would achieve supremacy by invasion time, and therefore could not tailor its Sending to respond to a particular presence. It only waited long enough, in its maker’s opinion, for whoever ran the Kierstaad Protectorate to make his way to the crystalline garden. And then a few minutes more, just to make sure.

Suddenly the figure seemed no longer a simple image, but a living man. Blue eyes looked about the garden, then fixed on the invader standing closest. It was difficult for the mock-Kierstaad to make formal obeisance—he now lacked most of the parts that needed to be smoothed, or flattened, or drooped—but he did the best he could with his inadequate human flesh. It would have to be enough.

The Prince’s image had aged, he noted. The pale skin was no longer perfectly smooth, its blush no longer resonant with perfect health. There was a streak of white in the yellow hair, and lines where no lines had ever been. That was the way of it, he recalled. The chosen flesh of the Undying Prince remained youthful for decades, but once it began to age its decay was swift and dramatic. The soul inside that slender, graceful body would be preparing itself for Rebirth now, and neither man nor rakh could hope to predict what form the Prince would take next time, not even what gender he might adopt.

Briefly, the mock-Kierstaad wondered what the Prince’s first flesh had looked like. Briefly. He was a rakhene warrior, bred for the Prince’s purposes, and as such did not have either the capacity or the inclination to philosophize at length.

The figure drew in a deep breath and spoke. “Word reaches me that two of the Protectorates have fallen. You are to be commended. I hear of no outcry from the humans, so clearly you managed to keep your presence in the north a secret from them. Excellent. I know that this job is difficult for you, that you would far rather kill than hide, far rather take vengeance upon your human enemies than pretend to be one of them . . . but have patience. That time will come. I promise it.”

“Remember: strike now, and a handful of humans will fall. Strike later, in force, and you may cleanse the entire region of their stink forever.”

“On to other matters: You know that the foreigners we seek may now be traveling through your lands. No doubt you’ve sent out teams to search for them, in accordance with the Matria’s request, and established watch posts at the most likely points of passage in your realm. All very good. But the Matrias don’t know who and what these people are, and therefore their instructions were limited. So listen closely, and act upon my words; the fate of our entire project—as well as your own life—may well depend upon it.”

“Of the three humans who are traveling south, at least two—the males—are sorcerers. What this means is that you try to entrap them they’ll probably see it coming, anc the power that they wield may well give them the advantage in battle even if your people outnumber them. But though they are powerful they are also human, and human power is bound to the earth. When the earth shakes and for a brief time afterward, the fae they rely upon will be too hot to handle. Only then can you strike at them. Only then will they be helpless.”

“I realize that the motion of the earth cannot be predicted, which makes it hard for you to plan. Nevertheless the advantage of such a move is worth the inconvenience.”

“Your region is seismically active, and rarely does a week pass without a handful of tremors. Be patient. Be careful. Wait for Erna to give you your cue, and the enemies of our purpose may be dispatched to the hell of their own creation. I myself will launch a Working that should distract them; you may use that cover to move in silence and safety. I am confident in your ability to make this kill and safeguard our great project. Surely the scent of triumph will be strong upon you, so that when you return home your women will be aroused by its power.”

The apparition faded. Eyes first, dissolving into pools of blackness, and then the rest of the figure. For a moment Kierstaad’s conqueror stood very still, absorbing the essence of the message. He hadn’t ever thought in terms of what this project would do for his mating precedence. That was a concept worth savoring.

But he hadn’t come to a position of power through hormone balance alone—though that was certainly part of it—and even as he turned back to the keep he was mentally scouring the lands in his Protectorate, searching for a way to prepare a mobile ambush.

The travelers would have to avoid the villages there, and also there . . . the closeness of the mountains meant there was only one safe path open to them, so they must take that . . . they would make choices based on secrecy at every point, so their route could be predicted . . . yes. He began to visualize the emplacements, the preparations. Yes. It could be done. Wait for the earth to move, wait for the humans to be helpless, then attack . . .

He could almost smell the triumph on his fur.

20

It would have been easy back home to watch for an ambush. In Jaggonath a simple Knowing would have been enough to untangle the secretive patterns of the fae, to reveal where and when the subtle malevolence of entrapment had made its mark. Tarrant could have done it with little effort, maintaining such a Working for hours at a time. Even Damien could have kept it up for a reasonably long stretch of time, providing he kept repeating the mental patterns which sustained his Sight. But here, where repeated earthquakes made any long-term Working perilous, where the surge of earth-fae that accompanied all such tremors would burn his mind or Tarrant’s to a crisp before they had time to cry out a warning, such a sustained Knowing was out of the question. And so they had to rely upon intermittent Workings, short little bursts of information that they plucked from the fae whenever the currents looked safe.

It clearly distressed the Hunter to restrain himself this way, and Damien could understand why. As an adept Tarrant had lived immersed in the earth-fae since his first conscious moments; to grasp hold of that power and mold it to his will was as natural to him as breathing was to Damien. It took effort for him to keep himself from Working the fae, an effort that was clearly taking its toll on him. Periodically the priest would see the man stiffen in his saddle, or mutter angrily to himself, as if he had just restrained himself from some unconscious act of Knowing.

How could he have coped as a child, if he’d been born in this region? Damien suspected he wouldn’t have made it past adolescence, if that long. Little wonder there were no adepts here, nor anyone capable of a real Working . . .

And then he remembered the real reason for that, and his face flushed hot with shame and fury as he kneed his horse to a faster pace. If he was driven onward in this quest for no other reason, it was to avenge all those children. Generation after generation of helpless, innocent souls, sacrificed on the altar of intolerance . . . and they were all guilty of it, he thought. Every human being who participated—by cutting a tiny throat, by staking a frightened child out as bait for demons, or even just by sitting back and making no protest while others did the dirty work—every one of them was guilty, every one of them would answer before God for all those terrible deaths. And he, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, would see to it that the monster responsible for causing it all would burn in Hell forever. If he did nothing else of value in his life, that alone would be sufficient service to his God.

When dawn came and Tarrant left them, Damien and Hesseth made camp, but they lit no fire and raised no tents. They took the supplies they needed from their saddlebags and then refastened the leather packs; they fed and watered the horses and brushed them vigorously, then resaddled them. Though neither of them voiced their concern, it was clear that both of them wanted to be ready to move on a moment’s notice. Even the horses seemed to sense their inner tension, and made no protest when the bulky saddles were returned to their backs. Maybe danger was in the air. Maybe they could smell it.

They slept restlessly in turn, the slightest sound out of the ordinary rousing them in an instant. How much sleep Damien lost to the chattering of birds and the twigs broken by foraging rodents he didn’t want to know. But though his nerves were wound up tighter than a watch spring, he neither saw nor heard anything to indicate that trouble was coming, and when he dared to look at the currents he likewise perceived no immediate threat. Good enough for now. There was a strange flavor to the earth-power, he thought, but it was so faint that he couldn’t focus on it for a Knowing; they would have to wait for Tarrant to return before they could determine its source.

They had found a good campsite—close by the river but not visible from it, on firm rocky ground that hid the horses’ tracks, easily defended—and decided to stay where they were until nightfall. Damien was loath to risk travel again without Tarrant by his side, and though Hesseth wasn’t about to admit to such a sentiment, he suspected she felt the same way. Whatever personal revulsion she felt for the Hunter, it was, like his own, overweighed by a pragmatic appreciation of the man’s power.

God knows, if they’re on our trail, we need all the help we can get.

Promptly at sunset the Hunter rejoined them. His transformation was quick and businesslike, and as soon as the coldfire had faded from his flesh he dropped to one knee and placed the flat of his hand against the ground, as if testing the temperature of the earth. The delicate nostrils flared like a cat’s. After a moment he stood again, but his eyes were still fixed on the ground before him.

“The currents are very strange,” he muttered. “I noticed it when I awoke, and hoped it was no more than a passing anomaly . . . but it appears not.” He looked at Damien. “Did you sense it?”

“I sensed something,” the priest answered. “I couldn’t identify it.”

“Almost as if there were a foreign presence in the current . . . yet nothing so precise as that. I worked a Knowing when I first noticed it, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. That might mean that it’s nothing important, some natural occurrence which has no deeper meaning . . .”

“Or that something’s been Obscured from us,” Damien said grimly.

“Just so,” he agreed.

Tarrant held his hand up for silence. The pale eyes narrowed in concentration once more, and Damien could almost feel the raw power coalesce about him. The priest Worked his own vision, and he watched in awe as the silver-blue ripples of earth-fae gathered about the Hunter’s feet, in a pool so deep and so intense that he could no longer see the ground through its light. The very power of the earth obeyed the Hunter like a household pet, coming to heel upon command. And yet even that was not enough to serve his need. Tarrant reached out his hands as the power thickened, intensified, rose about his legs until waves of raw power, blue-burning, lapped at his knees. And then came the Knowing. Damien could see it taking shape, ghostlike, between his outstretched arms. A hint of form. A shadow of meaning. And then . . . nothing. The wraithlike image collapsed, its substance rejoining the pool of power at his feet. Then even that faded, until the earth-fae that attended Tarrant was no more brilliant than any other. The eddies and ripples which made up the current drew back from the Hunter and returned to their regular course. And Tarrant shook his head in frustration, acknowledging to himself—and to his traveling companions—that he had failed.

“If something was Obscured from us, it was well done.” Damien could hear the frustration in his voice, and something else. Fear? If something had been Obscured so well that even the Hunter couldn’t make it out, didn’t that imply a Working of tremendous power? Didn’t it speak of an enemy at least as powerful as Tarrant himself?

Not a nice thought. Not a nice thought at all.

“Well?” Hesseth demanded. “What do we do now?”

For a moment Tarrant said nothing. Damien could guess what was going through his mind. Enemies behind them, and now this foreign trace ahead . . . Even the Hunter, for all his arrogant confidence, had to be less than happy about their situation. Had to be considering their alternatives.

Only there weren’t any. That was the problem.

“It could be someone trying to Know us against the current,” he said at last. “Someone reaching out to establish an initial link with us. If so, I’ve turned it aside.” For now. He didn’t say it, but Damien could hear the words. This one time.

“Our enemy?” she asked.

He hesitated. Damien imagined he was thinking of the hundreds of miles between them and the supposed home site of their enemy, of the mountains and the cities and God alone knew what else that divided them, all of which would wreak havoc with such a Working. A Knowing worked across such a distance, across myriad obstacles and against the current, was almost doomed to failure.

“If so,” he said at last, “he has phenomenal power.”

“So what do we do?” Damien asked. Not liking the darkness in his tone at all.

The, Hunter looked south. What did those eyes see, which were always focused on the earth-power? For once Damien didn’t envy him his special Sight. “We go on. It’s all we can do. Perhaps once we cross the mountains we’ll be beyond his scrutiny . . . perhaps.”

They mounted up once more and continued south along the bank of the river. The ground was becoming more and more rocky, which helped to obscure their trail, but it was bad for the horses’ footing. More than once, Damien had to dismount to dig out a sharp rock from his horse’s hoof, and once they had to stop long enough for him to Heal the sole of Hesseth’s mount, where a stone chip had gashed deeply into the tender flesh behind the toe-guards. Several times they had to lead the animals down to the river—no easy task in itself—and make their way warily through shallow water that ran black as ink, obscuring any dangers that might lie underneath. Their fear of earthquakes meant that Damien dared not use Senzei’s trick, using the glow of like earth-fae through the water to detect irregularities beneath the surface, but Tarrant led them forward with his own special Sight and thus they proceeded without mishap.

Periodically Tarrant would signal for them to stop, and he would study the earth-power anew. Not just for signs of ambush now, although that was still a concern. The foreign trace he had failed to interpret clearly worried him, and he began to stop more and more frequently in an attempt to fix on it. Damien wondered if he had ever before been so completely frustrated in his attempt to Know something.

“Is it getting stronger?” he asked him once. The Hunter’s expression grew grim, but he said nothing. Which was in itself a kind of affirmation.

“Let’s say I don’t like the feel of things,” he muttered at last. “Not at all.”

“What about our pursuers?” Hesseth asked him.

He looked about, studying the earth-fae carefully. “Those who follow are still some distance behind us,” he said at last. “But those who lie in wait are closer than I would like. And it’s strange . . .” He bit his lower lip, considering. “In the other Protectorates I had the distinct impression that there were men scouring the woods for us, a general but unfocused effort . . . but here the feeling is different. Much more focused.” He looked back at them. “I think it’s crucial for you two to get safely across to the east before the sun rises. That’ll put you in a different current, safe from whoever’s trying to reach us.”

“Is there something specific you’re afraid of?” Damien asked him.

The Hunter’s expression darkened. “I’m wary of anything that has the power to defy me.” For a moment he sounded tired; it was a strangely human attribute. “The foreign trace muddies the current enough that it’s hard for me to tell just how far ahead our enemies are. I don’t like that. And I don’t like the thought that it might get worse as we continue going south.”

“You think it’s some kind of attack?”

“I don’t know what it is. I’d prefer not to have to find out.” He pulled his horse about so that it faced to the south once more, and urged it into motion.

“Let’s just hope the pass comes up soon,” he muttered.

It was more a gap than a pass proper, more a wound in the earth’s rocky flesh than anything which Nature had intended. Some quake in ages past had split through the mountainside, and centuries of wind, water, and ice had worried at the resulting crack until it was wide enough—barely—for a mounted man to pass through at the bottom. Its walls were riddled with parallel faults that slashed diagonally through the rock, and erosion had worn at the varying layers until the whole of it looked like a bricklayer’s nightmare. It was easier to imagine that vast, trapezoidal slabs of stone had been affixed to the walls of the gap, and that the mortar between them had been washed away, than it was to envision the whole as one solid piece which time and the elements had carved up so drastically.

They stared at it for some time in silence, each traveler cocooned in his own misgivings. At last Damien gave vent to their joint response.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“Hardly encouraging,” the Hunter agreed.

He urged his horse a few steps closer—the animals didn’t seem to like it any more than they did—and took a good look at the walls of the crevasse. And cursed again, softly. No doubt Tarrant was examining it for flaws, tracing the lines of earth-fae as they ran through the channels in the rock, seeing where it might give, seeing where it might be solid. To Damien it just looked bad.

“Should we-” he began, but as he turned back toward Tarrant and Hesseth, the Neocount’s expression silenced him.

“Don’t Work!” the Hunter warned, in a tone that was becoming all too familiar.

He pulled his horse sharply around and went away from the crevasse, fast. Even as he rejoined his party the earth began to tremble. He saw Tarrant assessing the terrain with a practiced eye, checking for immediate dangers, and he did the same. Hesseth, who had grown up on the plains, didn’t share their instinctive reaction, but she was sharp enough to move with them when they forced their mounts—now skittish and hard to control—a few yards back to the north, where the ground looked more solid.

To the east of them the mountains rumbled, the earthquake’s roar magnified in the hollow chambers that riddled the ancient rock like sound in a musical instrument. The horses stepped about anxiously, trying to keep their balance as the ground bucked and twisted beneath them. A granite slab overhead came loose with a crack and hurtled down into the river just ahead of them. Then another. Spray plumed up in white sheets and fell over them like rain. The animals were frightened enough that they might have bolted, but even they seemed to know that there was nowhere to go, and the party managed to keep control of them. Barely. It was, as Damien had feared, a Bad One. Not their first on this trip by any means, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.

At last the rumbling faded, and the ground about them settled down. There was a gash in the earth just south of them which hadn’t been there before, and they had to jump the horses across it to get back to the mouth of the pass. The broken walls looked twice as imposing as before, Damien thought. As if Nature herself had seen fit to give them a reminder of what havoc she could wreak, once they were committed to that narrow space.

The Neocount pulled up alongside Damien. His horse was still jumpy, and for once he was unable to calm it with a touch; the earth-fae was still running molten from the earthquake’s outpouring, and not even an adept dared make contact with it.

“Well,” the Hunter began, “I see no real alternative—”

Shots rang out in the crisp night air, three distinct explosions that split the night with a crack. One of them hit the rock beside Tarrant, so that chips of granite flew at him.

One scored the ground by the feet of Hesseth’s mount. And the third-

Damien’s horse squealed in pain and terror and bucked. It happened so fast the priest barely had time to react. His hand closed about the pommel of his saddle with spastic force as he pressed his knees into the horse’s flanks, desperately trying to keep his seat. He was aware of Hesseth’s horse wheeling to the north of him—also wounded?—and of Tarrant crying out orders which he had no way of hearing. Shots rang out again, but he had no way of knowing if any of them had hit their mark; his entire world had shrunk to the limit of a horse’s reach, and every fiber of his being was focused on its motion, its terror, and his own mounting danger.

It went down on one leg then, and he knew with a fighter’s certain instinct that it was going down for good. As the massive weight of the animal fell to the ground he pushed himself free of it, hitting the ground with a force that drove the breath from his lungs, rolling to his right, away from the animal, away from the gunfire, sharp pain in his left arm where he struck a rock—but kept rolling, kept moving—he heard the thud of his animal hitting the earth, the terrified squeal of its dying, and he suddenly understood that they hadn’t missed him like he thought. They had been shooting for the horses, they understood that once the great beasts were out of the picture it was man against man, a party of three against an army . . . Dazed, he lay still for an instant, trying to get his bearings. Hesseth was by the mouth of the crevasse, her weapon raised to her shoulder, ready to return fire as soon as the enemy was visible. Tarrant—where was Tarrant? He looked up and found the black horse not a yard from his face. The Hunter’s face was a mask of fury as he kept the animal moving, gesturing for Damien to get to his feet even as his other hand braced a stolen pistol for firing.

Another shot rang out from the woods, and this time Tarrant answered with gunfire. The sharp report rang in Damien’s ear as he staggered to his feet. In the distance he heard someone cry out in pain and surprise, and a crashing that might be the fall of a body. Hesseth’s bolt whizzed past them as Tarrant reached out a hand for him. Damien grasped him tightly about the wrist, felt Tarrant’s ice-cold fingers close like a vise about his own wrist as the Hunter’s booted foot kicked out of its stirrup, freeing the metal ring for Damien’s use. Pain shot up his damaged arm like fire as he caught it with his toe and vaulted up onto the black horse’s back. The back edge of the saddle rammed into his crotch, but he stayed there, stayed there despite the blinding pain, afraid to slide back for fear he would fall off, unable to slide forward. Praying like he had never prayed before.

The black horse followed Hesseth’s past the mouth of the crevasse and into the darkness beyond. In the distance Damien could hear his own horse squealing, and he hoped that in its dying madness it would at least provide an obstacle for the armed men who were sure to follow. The walls of the crevasse scraped against them as the horses struggled along its jagged bottom. Damien had gotten a firm enough knee-grip on the horse’s flanks that his crotch was no longer slamming down onto the saddle with every step—thank God for that—and he watched the chasm walls pass by all too slowly, as the horses picked their way in near-darkness over boulders and crevices and water-filled potholes. Damien was painfully aware of how precariously those tons of rocks overhead seemed to be balanced, of how very close the looming walls were pressed against them. If there were an aftershock now . . . but no, he mustn’t think of that. Just keep riding. Just hang on. They were committed now, for better or for worse, and there was nothing they could do one way or the other to save themselves if an earthquake did come. Not without being able to Work.

If it shakes, it shakes. If we die, we die. Better come to terms with that now.

It seemed they rode for eternity like that, but in fact it could have been no more than mere minutes. Damien’s chest and arms were chilled from contact with the unearthly cold of the Hunter’s body, but he managed to hang on to the man. Behind him the, priest could hear cries of pursuit; they were not nearly as far behind them as he would like. We’re not going to make it, he thought. Fear churned coldly in his gut. The horses just can’t do it. Then, to his immense relief, the chasm floor evened out somewhat. Hesseth’s mount bolted forward, and Tarrant’s horse followed suit. But though they were able to pull ahead of their pursuers for a time, so that their cries no longer echoed behind them, Damien knew that the change was only temporary. And when the horses pulled up short before a veritable obstacle course of fallen boulders, he knew with dread certainty that they weren’t going to make it through fast enough. They were going to have to take a stand and fight.

But Tarrant had other plans. As his horse nervously pawed the rocky earth, he scanned the walls of the crevasse above them with meticulous attention, and Damien could just imagine what he was seeing. Molten power pouring from the clefts like lava, cascading down the walls in sheets of fire to boil about their feet. Too hot to handle. Too hot to use. It would cool off soon, now that the quake was over, but not soon enough. Not for them.

Then the Hunter swung one leg forward over his horse’s neck and dismounted. As Damien slid forward, he put the end of the reins in his hand and instructed them, “Go on, the two of you. Go as far as you can, as fast as you can. Get out of this trap if that’s possible, and then make camp. I’ll see that there’s no pursuit.” Despite the moonlight which illuminated his face, his expression was unreadable. “Go!”

He struck the black horse sharply on the rear and it bounded forward, clearing the nearest obstacle by inches. Damien just had time to see Tarrant take hold of the rock wall as if he meant to climb it, and then a protrusion cut off his sight-line. For a few seconds he could do no more than cling to the horse as it made its way along the rock-strewn ground; then he reined it in and motioned for Hesseth to pull ahead of him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’m going back to him.” He swung his leg back over the horse and dismounted; fire shot through his groin as he landed. “I think he’s going to do something very stupid. I want to make sure he doesn’t do it alone.” He noticed that there was blood on her arm, a crimson smear from elbow to wrist. But since she had chosen to use that arm to guide the horse, he assumed it wasn’t a serious wound. “Take this.” He undipped the lead line from his saddle and threw it over to her. Tarrant’s horse snorted impatiently as she pulled it into line with her own.

He met her eyes for a moment. Amber, alien, and so very worried. “I’ll be all right,” he promised her. “Go as far as you can. I can Locate you later, when the fae cools down.”

“Be careful,” she whispered. Then, with a fearful glance back over her shoulder—but their pursuers hadn’t caught up with them, not yet—she urged her own horse forward. The black horse snorted once in indignation, but when the lead grew taut it followed, and soon the two of them were out of sight, swallowed by the harsh shadows of the crevasse.

Damien turned back the way they had come and retraced the last few yards quickly. It hurt to walk, it would hurt even more to climb, but he had seen what Tarrant might not have noticed: a perfect half-moon directly overhead, harbinger of the dawn. Maybe the skies hadn’t started growing lighter yet, maybe Tarrant’s special senses hadn’t yet reacted to the threat of the coming sunlight, but Damien had traveled with him long enough to know how acute the danger was. Especially if he couldn’t Work. Especially—and this most of all—if the Hunter was doing something as foolhardy and dangerous as Damien suspected he was.

He ran back to the place where Tarrant had left them and studied the southern wall. When he found sufficient handholds to support his weight, he hoisted himself up. Pain shot up his damaged arm as he shifted his weight onto it, but if it wasn’t broken outright it was just going to have to work for a living. He moaned softly but kept climbing. The wall of the crevasse was rife with fault lines, but they all angled downward; he had no trouble finding a place to dig in with his fingers or feet, but it took all his rock-climbing skill to keep from sliding out as he shifted his weight, ever so carefully (but not too slowly, there were enemies soon to follow), jamming his fingers and sometimes his fists into the cracks so hard that they were forced to support him. Briefly he considered how much danger he was in if Tarrant got to the top before him. Damned unlikely, he thought. The Hunter might be unequaled in sorcery, but it was unlikely he had much experience in rock climbing. If he managed not to fall at all, it would be damned slow going.

Twenty feet above the chasm floor. High enough that their attackers might not notice him if they passed beneath. Thirty. He found a horizontal ridge large enough for his feet to fit into and eased his way west along it, back toward where he figured Tarrant must be. Relatively easy going . . . and then a chunk of granite broke loose from beneath his foot and plummeted down to the floor so far below. Its impact was like an explosion in the moonlit silence, the sound of which echoed for long minutes afterward. He hugged the cold rock, his heart pounding. His arm throbbed with such pain that he could hardly move it, but move it he did: one foot to the right where a deep chink beckoned, and a hand to follow. Move after move, his practiced eye struggling to make out forms in the darkness. On the floor of the chasm the moonlight had been helpful, but here it merely taunted him, shining its light upon smooth, useless surfaces and casting the areas he needed most into deep black shadow. He made his way more by feel than by sight, hoping that Tarrant’s superior vision wouldn’t give him too much of an advantage-

And then he saw him. Dark silk whipping out from the rock, pale skin against cold granite, the glitter of gold threads on his scabbard. He had found a ledge some two feet in depth and nearly ten feet across, and he was standing on it with his back to the chasm wall, studying the terrain beneath him. He looked over in surprise as Damien’s fingers caught at the ledge, and stern disapproval flashed in his eyes as the priest levered himself up on to it, and eased his way over to him.

“You shouldn’t have come,” the Hunter whispered.

“Yeah. That makes two of us.” He looked down at the rocky wall beneath them, but all he could make out were jagged shadows. Too damned many jagged shadows. In the distance he could hear voices, now, and the sound of men running. “I thought you might do something stupid like trying to bring the wall down.”

The pale eyes glittered. “I might.”

“What about the fae? Is it workable yet?”

“Almost,” he said softly, his voice no louder than the wind. “Not quite.”

“Then what—”

In answer he pulled out his sword. It wasn’t nearly as bright as it had been back in the west, but clearly he had been reWorking it. Its cold light spilled across the rock with viscous luminescence.

“You can’t do that,” Damien whispered. The voices from below were closer now; any moment they might see their pursuers. “Even if you use that for power instead of the earth-fae, you’ll still be making contact with the currents—”

“You see an alternative?” the Hunter demanded.

An instant of silence, nightchilled, eloquent. He looked into those eyes—so cold, so inhuman—and saw in them the truth of what he already knew: that the Hunter feared death more than any living man he knew. So much so that he was once willing to sacrifice his humanity in the name of continued existence. So much so that now, with all the denizens of Hell licking their lips at the thought of his imminent demise, he could commit himself to a mission like this as coldly and dispassionately as if there were no risk at all. Because there was, as he said, no real alternative. If the pass stayed open, their enemies would catch them; it was only a question of time. And he could neither flee to safety nor Work the earth-fae to save them while that power still surged.

This way . . . it was a slim chance, but it was all he had. And therefore it was the only path the Neocount of Merentha could possibly choose.

Tarrant turned toward the spot he had chosen, and slid his sword into one of the cracks in the rock. He angled it carefully. Blue sparks played around the lips of the crack as he moved it, and once Tarrant cried out sharply in pain, as if something had burned him. Could he Work the sword’s power on the earth itself without opening himself up to the raging force of the earth-fae? Damien reached out to him-

—and then the channel between them came alive and he saw as the Hunter saw, saw the hot power cascading down over the rocks, saw it surging into the chasm where it boiled, it fumed, its steam came up and licked the chasm walls, burning, boiling . . . he could feel it through his arm as if his own hand grasped the coldfire sword, a power so terrible that his flesh was seared where it touched him, a power that transformed his cells more quickly than they could ever hope to heal themselves, a power that killed, a power that burned, a power that swallowed the whole of the world in blinding white light . . .

And there. In the center. The point of a sword. The chill of expanding ice. He heard the rock explode, felt the shock drive him back against the granite wall as the chosen fault line gave way and a whole section of wall came loose. It ripped free with a roar like a cannonade and thundered down into the chasm. Striking the far wall with deafening force, shattering into a brittle tonnage of raw granite that bounced and split and fell again, filling the narrow cavity beneath. Each boulder enough to crush a man, each one followed by a thousand more, a veritable sea of rockfall, a tidal wave of granite. Damien felt the ledge shiver beneath his feet, and for a moment he was afraid that it, too, would give way. He moved toward Tarrant defensively, just in time to see him fall. Just in time to reach out with all his strength and slam the man back against the rock, hard enough to keep him there. He could feel the pain raging through him, the fire, the glittering spears of heat. “Gerald!” he yelled. Trying to get his attention. Trying to break the contact. But the Hunter was lost in his own Working, was drowning in the raw power of what he had conjured. Was losing his battle.

Only an idiot Works the fae right after an earthquake, Ciani had once said. Or was it Senzei? Damien leaned over as far as he could and tried to get hold of the Hunter’s other hand, the one clasped about the blazing sword. Its light was blinding now, a cold blue unsun that seared his vision to icy blackness if he looked at it directly. Have to break the link, somehow. Have to get him loose. The narrow ledge was trembling beneath his feet and he knew that it was now or never, that if he waited for an aftershock to hit they would both be dead. And then what would happen to Hesseth? “Come on,” he muttered, and he reached across Tarrant to get hold of his far arm. For a moment he lost his balance and began to fall backward, then—with an effort that caused him to cry out in pain—recovered his stability. Only one more foot to go. His arm could hang in there. It wasn’t broken. Was it? Now several inches. Now one . . .

His hand closed about the Hunter’s wrist and he pulled back on it, hard. He had hoped that the sudden movement would break the link, but clearly it would take more than that. “Come on, damn you! Come out of it!” He could feel the cold power surging through his hand, chilling his flesh to immobility. And beyond it—behind it—the power of the earth itself, waiting to surge through him as it had clearly surged through Tarrant.

He tried to focus on the sword. His arm was numb now, and the coldness was spreading. He tried to remember how hungry that steel was for death, how eager it was to consume any human soul that touched it. “Come on,” he whispered to it. “Come and get me.” Gravel trickled from somewhere above, raining down into the chasm. The world was filled with dust. “You want my life? Come get it.” He was trying to focus the sword on him, not the earth, in the hope that would break the link between the two. The cold power licked at him, and spears of ice shot through his veins. “That’s it,” he whispered. “Come to me.”

And then he was slammed back, hard. The breath left his lungs in a short burst and he was gasping, swallowing the rock dust that his motion had dislodged. He was aware that he no longer held Tarrant’s wrist, but it was hard to say just where his arm was; that whole side of him was numb with cold, unfeeling.

He managed to get his eyes open. The first thing he saw was that half the ledge was gone; Tarrant’s blast must have weakened it enough that it finally gave way. Then he looked up and saw Tarrant. The man’s face was white, utterly colorless, and his eyes were flushed red. But he was conscious. Safe. Alive, in a manner of speaking.

“That was a very foolish thing to do,” the Hunter gasped. The hand that held the sword was shaking; he seemed to lack the strength to sheathe it. “Very foolish,” he whispered.

“Yeah.” Damien wiped the dust from his eyes. The feeling was coming back into his arm, but not as fast as he would have liked. Not with dawn coming. “I had a good teacher.”

And then he saw a faint smile on Tarrant’s face—only a flicker, but a smile nonetheless—and he knew deep down inside that they were going to be okay. Both of them.

“Can you climb?” he asked. Flexing his frozen arm. It would move now, though it was still stiff. He didn’t like to think about how close he had come to losing more than an arm. He could still feel the chill power of the Worked steel, even from a distance. “It’s not too far to the top.”

The Hunter looked up. Damien thought he saw him shudder.

“Not much choice, is there?”

“You could always transform yourself.”

Instead of parrying with a dry retort, Tarrant leaned back against the granite wall and shut his eyes.

God in Heaven. He’s in bad shape. Damien tried to gauge the rock above them—no easy feat at that angle—and wondered if he could get them both up to the top. Probably so, he decided. But not before dawn. Already the sky was lightening in the east, which meant they had, what? Half an hour? Not long enough, he thought, assessing the rock face above them. Not nearly long enough.

He turned to find Tarrant’s eyes also turned toward the east. “I guess it’s time to climb,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Looks like it. Up or down?”

“Up.” He didn’t even look at the rock face before committing himself. “There’s no shelter down there. I checked.”

“And above?”

“One can only hope,” he whispered.

He moved to sheathe the coldfire blade—and almost dropped it, his hand losing strength as it struck against the edge of the ledge. Damien grabbed for it quickly, and for a moment he almost lost his balance. But compared to some of what he’d climbed, a two-foot ledge was practically a luxury accommodation; he managed to keep three points on the rock while he closed his hand about the icy grip, and after a moment he regained his security. He straightened up slowly, caught his breath, and eased the long sword into Tarrant’s scabbard.

“Try to hold onto that thing, will you?”

The Hunter managed a faint smile. “I promise.”

“You going to make it?”

He glanced again at the east, and this time Damien did see him shiver. “I have to, don’t I?”

Damien pulled a knife from his belt and tore a ragged strip from the bottom of his shirt. Then two more. When he knotted them together, they made a strip some eight feet long; it was far from ideal, but it would have to do. “On your belt,” he ordered, handing one end to Tarrant. The other end he affixed to his own. It was good linen, tough fabric, and it might make the difference if one of them slipped.

If he slips, he corrected himself. It would take all his skill to cling to the rock face if the weight of a grown man suddenly jerked him back: how well could Tarrant, so obviously wounded, manage such a feat?

They started to climb. The rising sun at least gave them some measure of light, so that Damien was able to pick out a reasonably workable course. Tarrant climbed well enough, but his hands were shaking from weakness; how long would he be able to keep it up? Damien tried not to look at the sky as they struggled upward, but he couldn’t help but notice that the bumps and crevices surrounding him were becoming more and more visible.

Then there was a crumbling ledge and a slip and Damien grabbed his companion, flattening him back against the rock. He could feel Tarrant’s growing weakness through the contact, and it frightened him. How badly had the earth-fae hurt him? How long would it take him to heal? He hauled him up to the next step, helped the pale hands grasp hold of a helpful protrusion. Would he heal? The next few yards were easy enough. He was beginning to think they would make it. The sky was blue now, and the stars of the rim were no longer visible. They fought for another yard, then another. His hands were bleeding, and Tarrant’s own were scraped raw. One more little bit . . .

And then they were over, they had made it, they pulled themselves up onto the coarse dirt of the mountain’s face and lay there for a minute in sheer exhaustion. Damien rolled up onto one elbow and studied his companion. Tarrant didn’t look good. He didn’t look good at all.

“We need shelter,” he told him. “You tell me where to go, I’ll get you there. But I can’t find it myself.” When Tarrant didn’t move, he whispered fiercely, “We’ve only got maybe half an hour left!”

“Less than that,” the Hunter gasped. “Far less than that.” He made a move as if to rise up, but clearly lacked the strength. Damien hooked an arm about his shoulder and helped him. With effort, he got him to his feet. It seemed to take forever.

“Can you See?” Damien asked. “Can you find something?”

The Hunter nodded weakly. Damien supported him as he studied the surrounding terrain, as he tried to read structure into the black earth and scraggly foliage that surrounded them. “There,” he whispered at last. Pointing east. “Something that way.”

Together they struggled toward the east. Occasionally Tarrant would study the ground again and then point in a new direction. Damien took him where he wanted to go. If he stopped to think about things, it would probably terrify him how very weak Tarrant had become. He could no longer even stand alone, much less manage the exertion necessary to forge forward across the rough terrain.

Has he finally pushed himself too far? Damien wondered. What if this is beyond his healing?

The Hunter fell to his knees; it took Damien a moment to realize that he’d done it deliberately. “There,” he whispered. Pointing to a shallow depression in the earth, where a thornbush was rooted.

Damien knelt by the depression. The bush made it impossible for him to see the bottom, so he grasped it by the base and pulled it forcibly from the ground. He could feel the thorns pierce his hand as he wrenched it loose, but that was just too bad. He didn’t have the time to be more careful.

What was revealed when the last of the roots pulled loose was a hole some two feet in diameter, like that an animal might make. He pushed at the edge of it with his hand, and then, when he saw what it was, repositioned himself so he could kick at it. The earth gave way beneath his feet, tumbling down into darkness. He could feel cool air beneath his face as he finally hit rock at one edge, then another. Animals might have used this hole, but they sure as hell didn’t make it; Tarrant had found the opening to a natural cavern.

With care he lowered the Neocount’s body down into blackness. The pale skin was already reddened from contact with dawn’s early light, the eyes swollen and bloodshot. He hoped it wasn’t too late. When Tarrant’s body had fallen through, he followed it, lowering himself down into the cavern’s depths.

It was a drop of perhaps twelve feet. He managed to avoid landing on his companion, which was an accomplishment all on its own. Tarrant lay limp and unconscious, and for all he knew might have been dead. Time enough later to figure that out. He dragged his body away from the opening, until sunlight no longer shone directly on him.

The cavern was floored with mud, and by the time he found a dark nook to serve as shelter they were both covered in it. But darkness meant safety. That was all that mattered right?

He unclasped Tarrant’s cloak and managed to get it off him, then used it to cover his body like a blanket. The Hunter’s skin was cold, utterly unlifelike, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. He took care that the man’s hands and face were safely covered, then leaned back at last and drew in a deep breath. Another. Something cold and scared finally unknotted in his gut. Even the pain in his arm began to subside.

They’d be all right. They’d find Hesseth when night fell, and Damien would Heal the living, and . . . they’d be all right. The worst was over.

Secure in the darkness of their muddy haven, Damien Vryce slept.

21

The Hunter didn’t awake at dusk. Even though the cave was black, even though the sun outside had long since set behind the mountains, still his body did not stir. Damien tried the taste of blood to bring him back—not a hard thing to supply, as his hands were scored with scratches and puncture wounds—but even that didn’t work. He tried not to worry. He had seen the Hunter recover from worse—that is, from what he assumed was worse—and somewhere deep inside he did have faith that the man was going to make it, that it was just some idiosyncracy of his alive-but-not-alive flesh that had kept him asleep this long. He extinguished the tiny fire he had lit inside the cave, just in case total darkness was what the man needed. How did he heal himself, anyway? He had already said that the Workings he used were unlike those of a true Healing. What manner of power did he require? And did he have the strength to conjure it? Those were the thoughts that ran through Damien’s mind as he waited in the inky blackness, listening to the trickle of rain aboveground and the occasional rustling of insects. What was it the Hunter had said to him? I have no power over fire, or light, or life. Did the earth-fae count as fire? Did the images of magmal heat and searing light that accompanied its surge the night before reflect its true essence, or was that just a visual trapping which his own human mind applied?

Damn it, Hunter, wake up. We’ve got work to do.

Coreset passed. He knew because he climbed up to check on it, using the linen strip he’d knotted together for their dangerous ascent. It had taken him a good half hour to get it into place; dark caverns were far easier to drop down into than they were to climb out of. But he’d had nothing to do with the daylight hours besides collect firewood, look for food, and arrange for an easier way out of the cave. And pray, of course. So very hard. So many times.

God, there’s so much wrong in this land. So much pain and grief and suffering I don’t know where to start. I never felt like I was overwhelmed before, but this time I do. Give me strength, please. Renew my faith in this mission. Help me protect my companions, because without them I am nothing. The evil in this land is too vast, too firmly entrenched, for a single man to defeat it.

After Coreset, at last, the Hunter stirred. The first thing Damien heard was a moan from underneath the cloak. He was up in an instant, and managed to feel his way over to where the Neocount lay. There was the rustling of fabric as the Hunter freed himself, then a long, laborious breath.

“You all right?” Damien asked.

“I’ve been better,” the Hunter whispered. Hoarsely. Weakly.

“If you need blood—”

“Not from you,” he said quickly. Then added, “Not tonight, anyway. I’ll make it.”

The shadows stirred as Tarrant struggled to his feet. “What time is it?” he managed.

“I don’t know. The Core set a while ago.”

“Ah,” he said. “The darkness. Of course.”

He walked over to where the linen strip hung. He seemed to have no trouble seeing in the dark, but his step sounded unsteady. Hesitant. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

And that said it all. Because on any other night the Hunter could simply have changed form and flown out, or crawled out, or whatever else it took to get up there. To be trapped in his human flesh . . . that meant that he was far from healed. Not a good sign at all.

“Here,” Damien said. “I’ll help you.”

He felt his way over to where the Hunter stood. He’d had plenty of time to explore the small space during the day, so the darkness was only a small hindrance. He cupped his hands and braced himself, fighting for traction in the mud. When he was steady, he felt a cold hand on his shoulder, and the instep of a muddy boot slipped into his grip. He held it tightly as the Neocount stepped up, trying to time his support with the man’s rise so that together they might gain as much height as possible. It wasn’t quite enough to get him to the opening, but when he had gotten a secure grip on the linen strip Damien shifted his position and pushed him higher. There was a scrabbling on the dirt above then, and the weight was gone.

He stopped a minute to catch his breath, then climbed up himself.

The Hunter was standing to one side of the hole, waiting. As Damien gained the top, he saw him looking about, taking in the lay of the land. Damien wondered how much he remembered from the night before.

“Where’s our rakh friend?” Tarrant asked. His voice was raspy and harsh, as though his throat had been wounded. And perhaps it had. Who could say what damage the wild fae had caused, when it burned its way through his flesh?

“Gone east through the gap.” Damien brushed at the mud on his breeches. A useless gesture. His whole body was encrusted with dark brown muck, and the only thing that made it tolerable was the fact that Tarrant was likewise covered. It shouldn’t have pleased him that the man was dirty, but it did. It seemed so . . . well, human.

“And our pursuers?”

The Neocount’s words startled him. He doesn’t know, he realized. He doesn’t remember. “You stopped them,” he said shortly. “You brought the wall down right on their heads. Even if others try to follow us, you made the gap impassable. They’d have to climb the mountain to find our trail again.”

He considered that. “I remember . . . planning that,” he said at last. “I remember . . . fear. And fire. And climbing—that dimly, as though it were a dream. No more.”

“You tapped into the earth-fae after the quake. Not right after, but soon enough. It almost killed you.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I can see that.”

“You going to be all right?”

“Nothing’s damaged that won’t heal. It will take time, though, and-” He stopped himself, but not before Damien had finished the thought in his own mind. Fresh food, he thought. Fear. Blood. Human suffering.

“We should regroup first,” Tarrant said quietly.

“Yeah. I thought we should parallel the gap as long as possible, since that’s the way she went. It’d be hard to work a Locating for her on this side of the crest.”

The Hunter nodded. “The ridge most likely divides the current. Once we cross that, it should be easy.”

“Can you walk that far?”

“I’m standing, aren’t I?”

“But if your strength—”

“Did you bring the horses?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then I have no alternative, have I? Strength or no strength.”

Damien bit back a sharp rejoinder. He should be glad that Tarrant was irritating him once more. It showed the man was recovering.

“This way, all right?” He started across the rocky ground.

“One moment.”

He stopped, and then after a second turned back. The Hunter was standing with his eyes shut, his brow furrowed as if in intense concentration. One hand was on the hilt of his sword, and though the powerful blade had not been drawn it clearly served as a necessary reassurance.

Cool silver flame spurted up from the ground around his feet. Not with its usual force, but still cold enough to chill the air around him. The unfire licked at his flesh with silver-blue tongues, conjured flames twining about his flesh until the whole of his body was immersed in it. A chill wind swept over Damien, and the scent of winter ice.

And then the flame was gone. A thin frost rimmed the Hunter’s body, that shivered free of him when he moved. Fine white ice crystals cascaded to the ground, along with something else. Something brown. It took him a moment to recognize it.

Damn your vanity, he thought, as the Hunter nodded his readyness and began to walk. There was no mud on him now, nor any sign of dirt or blood. What little moonlight there was gleamed on smooth silk and on spotless hair, perfectly arranged. Even the man’s leather boots were clean. Why did I know you’d do that?

“Come on,” he said. Brushing back his own sweat-slicked hair. “Let’s find Hesseth.”

They found the rakh-woman’s camp soon after midnight. The gap hadn’t taken her far, but it had taken her there safely; she and the two horses were gathered around a minimal campfire about a half-mile from the crevasse’s eastern end.

Two horses. That meant fewer supplies, missing maps, and one less animal to ride. Damien wondered which of the two remaining saddles would best allow him to ride double with Hesseth; his groin had no desire to repeat last night’s experience. Of course it would be Hesseth and him together, and Tarrant would ride alone; he never questioned that. He couldn’t picture the aristocratic sorcerer sharing his saddle with anyone, even if it would be the most practical distribution of weight. Some things you just didn’t ask.

There was a bandage on her arm, he noticed as they came into the small camp, and a patch of smelly ointment on her mare’s flank. Thank God the animal hadn’t bolted when it was hit. Tarrant’s black mount seemed unharmed and unflustered. I guess if you come from the Hunter’s Forest, Damien mused, even a place like this looks good.

There was no surprise on her face when they came into camp—armed and wary, she had probably spotted them coming some time ago—but the joy that suffused her face was a welcome greeting after hours of painful hiking. She came up to Damien and put a hand to the side of his face, rubbing gently. Sharing her scent, he realized; it must be a rakhene custom. He grinned at her in turn, not quite knowing how to respond. She even vouchsafed a minimal smile for Tarrant, a rare and precious gesture. He responded with a nod that said yes, he knew just what she meant by it, and yes, he was appropriately moved.

They traded their tales over the campfire, while Hesseth brewed warm tea and dug out the freshest of their rations. Damien could have eaten a horse. As for Tarrant, he stood apart from them while they ate and talked, scanning the darkness for danger. It was not a role Damien would have chosen for him in his current state, but he was glad to have him do it. He was so stiff by now that it was all he could do to lower himself to a sitting position and take the food that Hesseth offered. It was going to hurt like hell in the morning, he thought miserably, as he bit into a strip of dried meat.

He was acutely aware of Tarrant listening to him as he described their exploits of the night before, rediscovering his own actions through Damien’s words. A strange concept. How much they had come to depend on each other on this trip!

Danger makes strange bedfellows.

When he had told her everything, and when she had shared her own journey through the narrow gap, he set his food aside and applied his attention to their wounds. His groin ached like hell as he stretched forward to reach her arm, but thank God physical infirmity didn’t affect one’s Working. His own arm throbbed hotly as he studied her rakhene flesh, then used the fae to knit the broken cells together once more. After that he applied his skills to himself, and though his concentration was less than perfect, the currents were strong in this region; half an hour later, when he was secure that all the serious damage had been repaired, he relaxed and let the Working fade. His body still hurt like hell, but that was something he couldn’t fix. Pain is the brain’s way of signaling that something is wrong, his master had taught him. Alter that system and you’re messing with the brain itself. In time his throbbing nerves would figure out that the source of the problem was gone, and would quiet down.

It was partly his own fault, of course. He hadn’t Healed himself completely. But when earthquakes were as frequent as they were here, you didn’t waste precious time cleaning out a leftover hematoma; it was just too risky to Work that long. And besides (he told himself, wincing as he shifted position), no one ever died from a black—and-blue mark. Right?

When they were done with all that, Tarrant rejoined them. He looked slightly better than before, but that might have been the lighting; the warm light of the campfire was kinder to him than the moonlight. Certainly he was still weak, and when he lowered himself to the earth beside them, Damien saw his balance wavering.

“We’re still far from the valley,” he said. His voice sounded better, at least. “The map shows another two ridges between us and it, although what that translates to in terms of real-life mountains is anyone’s guess.”

“It’s a climb,” Hesseth agreed. “What about pursuit?”

“Unlikely, I think. They can’t follow your trail through the gap; I saw to that. And I’ve Obscured ours since dusk, so that it will be next to impossible to find.”

Given his condition, Damien was surprised. “Did you?”

The pale eyes fixed on him. “I only make a mistake once, priest.”

“Then we should get moving as soon as night falls.” Hesseth rewrapped the dried meat so that it would keep. “By then we should all be rested enough, anyway.”

The Hunter seemed to hesitate. “You can move when night falls,” he said quietly. “Or even before that, if you like. But I would recommend not entering the valley until I’m with you again; the Terata are said to hunt there.”

“What-” Hesseth began. Though she was clearly surprised by his intentions, Damien wasn’t. He’d been expecting something like this since Tarrant had climbed out of the cave.

“He needs food,” he said. He could hear the edge in his own voice. “That means humans. And there aren’t any where we’re going.”

“I could hold out for long enough to make it down south,” Tarrant explained, “but not in this condition. Nor would I be of any use to your—or to our—communal purpose without substantial healing.”

“Which requires killing,” Hesseth challenged.

Tarrant didn’t answer. No words were necessary.

“You’ll have to be careful,” Damien muttered. “They’re looking for us.”

“They won’t expect me to return, least of all on wing. I can fly right over their traps and their armies, into villages where no one lies in wait for me. The land is full of people,” he said evenly. His eyes were fixed on Damien, daring him to protest. “I’ll be safe enough.”

“How long?” the priest managed. Not meeting his gaze.

“At least a day or two. I’ll want to go far enough that no act of mine is linked to our presence; it would be a shame to escape their clutches now, only to inspire them to new pursuit later. I’ll be careful. Trust me.”

“Like you were in the cities?” Damien said sharply.

“Like I was in the cities,” he answered coolly. Not missing a beat. “Cover what ground you can in the next few days. But don’t go into the valley without me. If you get to it before I come back, then stop and rest. The horses will be grateful for it.”

He stood, then, and Damien could see by the motion how weak he was. How stiff. How much blood would it take to heal a weakness like that? How many deaths? He tried not to think about it.

You hire a demon to fight a demon, and this is the price you pay. “Where will you go?” he asked. Hating himself for his curiosity, even as he wondered which Protectorate would surrender its women to sate the Hunter’s appetite. God, if there were only an alternative.

“North,” the Hunter told him. “The way we came. Some place large enough to harbor an army . . . or a sizable raiding party. Some place that already smells of blood.”

He heard Hesseth draw in her breath sharply as she realized what he meant. Who it was he meant to kill.

Damien thought of the village they had passed through. The bodies, the blood . . . the children huddled in the bathroom, their necks cleanly slit. Whoever had killed them, their crime would taint the currents for miles. For one with the Hunter’s sight, they would be easy to find.

Easy to kill.

“The least I can do for the man who saved me last night is choose suitable prey,” the Hunter said. Standing back now, so that the shadows of the night might enfold him. So that the darkness might lend him its power. For a moment Damien was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to summon the power he needed, that his strength was too far gone. Hadn’t he once said that transformation was the most difficult of all workings?

Then the coldfire flared, blindingly bright, and from its pyre arose a great black bird. It beat the night air with its wings—once, twice—and then rose up into the air, where the night obscured its motion. Garnet talons glittered in the moonlight.

“Be careful,” Damien whispered. Watching as its great wings tamed the night wind. Watching as it rose yet higher, until distance and darkness hid it from sight.

Only later, when he knew for a fact that it was out of hearing, did he add—very quietly—“Good hunting.”

22

It took them four days to cross the mountains. They could have made better time if they’d tried, but there was no reason to rush. Knowing after Knowing made it clear that none of their pursuers had followed them, which gave them the luxury of leisure time for the first time in their journey. And after what they had seen and done in the Protectorates they needed it, both to regain their strength and their composure. Fortunately, the fertile silence of the wooded slopes was a perfect balm for human and rakhene soul alike. Even the horses seemed grateful for a few easy days.

Damien tried hard not to worry about Tarrant. Tried not to remember that once in the past the Hunter had left their company and then not returned. It seemed so long ago that he’d been captured, almost in another life . . . but the enemy was the same. In the rakhlands it had taken the form of a woman, here it might be a man or rakh or even a true demon—but there was no question in his own mind that the two powers were linked. And so Damien worried about Tarrant’s safety, and Hesseth no doubt worried about Tarrant’s safety, and they tried hard not to inflame each other’s fears by talking about them. That would only make it worse.

How much I’ve changed, he mused as they made camp one night. Once I would have stood back and let him die. Once I thought that nothing could be worse than freeing the Hunter to feed again. Now I protect him without a second thought, and calmly wave good-bye while he goes off to murder countless innocents. But the situation was different now and he knew it. Tarrant had saved his own life several times, and while he understood that it was always for a selfish purpose—the Neocount never did anything except to benefit himself—the fact remained that he had done it.

That changed how you looked at a man, whether you wanted it to or not. And the people he’d be killing weren’t innocents this time, were they? Murderers deserved to die. Since the justice of the Church couldn’t touch them, let the Hunter provide their punishment. Whatever he did to them, it couldn’t possibly be worse than what they did to that village. Could it?

Be honest, he chided himself. We can’t succeed in this mission without him. That’s the bottom line. You need him, and so you must endure him. Protect him, even. It’s all part of this dark game we’re playing.

Use evil to fight evil, the Prophet wrote. If you’re lucky, they’ll destroy each other. Is that what I want? That Tarrant should die in combat, delivering the world from two evils at once?

He shut his eyes. His hands were shaking.

I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore. Not sure of anything.

He said that his presence would corrupt me. Has it begun already? Is this what corruption feels like?

God, protect my spirit, he prayed. The enemy can have my body, my life . . . but preserve my soul, I beg You. I’ve placed it in such jeopardy with this alliance. But there was no other way. You can see that, can’t You? No other way to succeed.

At night, while they set up camp, he tried to explain to Hesseth about the earth-fae. Though she manipulated it unconsciously—as all native species did—she didn’t really see it, at least not in the sense that Tarrant did. And so she listened to his descriptions in rapt wonder, like a child listening to fairy tales. He tried to explain it all. How the earth-fae surged up from the beneath the planet’s crust with enough force to kill. How it settled down soon after and then flowed like water over the land, in currents that could be mapped and harnessed, from the strongest tide down to the tiniest ripple. Since humans used the earth-fae for their Workings, he explained, then all their Workings must flow with the currents. Thus Tarrant or he could attempt to Know their enemy—in other words, interpret the effect of his presence upon the earth-fae—but it would take tremendous power to launch an active assault against the current. For their enemy, of course, the opposite held true. It would take almost superhuman force to draw information upcurrent for hundreds of miles, but any message or assault which was launched from the south would naturally flow toward them. That’s what had worried Tarrant so much about the foreign touch in the currents near the crevasse, he explained; if it was an attempt to focus on their exact position, it might mean that something very big and very nasty was on its way.

And then, when he was done, he dared to ask her about the tidal fae. It was the first time since the rakhlands that he had broached the subject directly. He wasn’t sure she would take it well—in the past she had responded to such questions with downright hostility—but though she was silent for a moment, he sensed that it was not because she was offended by his question, but because she was trying to find words for something that was beyond all language.

“It’s like a heartbeat,” she said at last. “Like the whole world has a heartbeat, very slow and very resonant. Sometimes, when I want to Work, it’s as if I can feel the blood of the planet surging through everything, through the land and the sky and through me, and I can shape it with a thought . . . and sometimes the world is silent, and there’s nothing to shape. Nothing at all. There’s no telling which it will be, either. No predicting any given moment. Because I say it’s one heartbeat, but it’s really like a thousand, and the rhythm between them is what matters . . . including my own pulse. And all the rhythms of my body. Do you understand? It’s so hard to explain something you don’t think about. Something that humans never sense.”

“Do you see it in any form?”

“Sometimes. A flash of light, when several beats come together. As brilliant as a lightning strike when a lot of power is involved. Sometimes the whole sky will light up—just for an instant—like the whole world was a piece of shattered glass, with light glistening along every flaw. Light broken into a thousand colors. So very beautiful . . .” She shut her eyes, remembering. “It can be dangerous, though. I know of at least one khrast who was hunting when the tidal fae pulsed, and when the light blinded her, the quarry turned and charged . . . so we try not to see it, we train ourselves not to look. It’s a matter of survival, you understand.”

He asked her gently, “Do you succeed?”

“Mostly,” she smiled. “But it is very beautiful. And that’s part of what we learned from your species: how to hunger for beauty.” She sketched a pattern in the dirt with a claw while she spoke: circles within circles within circles. “And it’s part of what stands between us and our males. The defining difference, you might say.” She looked up at him. “Your women don’t see it?”

“Tarrant says that a few can, with effort. Occasionally a man gets a glimpse, but no more.”

“More sorcery.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re such strangers to this world, you humans. You come here and redefine our very world, you sculpt our native species as though they were clay, you spawn a thousand monsters each time you draw a breath . . . but you never really belong here. Not even after all these years. You live on this planet, but you’re not part of it.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Tell me about it.”

Days of traveling, nights of rest. A luxurious schedule, which he could indulge in only because of Tarrant’s absence. On the third night there were five minutes of true darkness, when the sun, the stars, and all three moons were hidden behind the bulk of the planet, and he wondered if Tarrant was taking advantage of its power. The true night might be a time of terror for most men, a time when humanity’s darkest imaginings borrowed substance from the night and came calling, but for the Hunter it was a time of unequaled power and potential. Maybe (Damien thought as he severed the spine of something gruesome which the dark fae had conjured) Tarrant could use it to get a handle on who or what they were going after. God knows, they could use information.

On the third day they came over a ridge and saw the valley at last. Vast, dramatic, forbidding, it was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He was accustomed to valleys that lay comfortably in the cradle of their surrounding mountains, flat plains which were a cohesive part of the mountain range which flanked them. This was a whole different creature. It was as though the earth had folded crisply in two, so that between the rocky hills they had just crossed and the soaring granite peaks of the eastern coastal range there was a deep crease—perhaps sea-level deep—with walls so steep that climbing them would be all but impossible, and a bottom that was lost in a sea of tree tops and mountain shadows. A white mist seemed to fill the whole of the valley, twining about the treetops like hazy serpents. The late afternoon sun did little to illuminate it, but cast its light instead on the sheer granite cliffs opposite them, so that the peaks seemed crowned in fire, and the depths were doubly dark by contrast. There would be precious few hours of the day in which the sun would rise high enough to shine directly down into the vast gorge, and even then the thick mist would protect the gloom that blanketed the miles like a shroud.

Despite the relative warmth of the afternoon, Damien found himself shivering. “That’s the route, huh?”

“The one he wanted.”

He stared at it a while longer, taking the measure of its gloom. As if by doing so he could somehow alter it. “It’s that or climbing mountains all the way south.”

“Or going back to the Protectorates.”

“Yeah.” A breeze drifted up to them, damp and cool. “No thanks.”

He braced himself, drew in a deep breath, and patterned a Knowing. For a minute the fae didn’t respond, and he was afraid that he was too far from the valley’s current to access its secrets. Then the familiar patterns appeared, and he dissected them carefully for information. He found no evidence of anyone watching them, or of anything lying in wait. Not yet. But there was a feeling about the area that he didn’t like, and he was almost disappointed when the Knowing failed to define a specific threat. Better an enemy you could give a name to than a cold, clammy ignorance crawling up your spine.

“Is it all right?” she asked.

He sighed, and let the Knowing fade. “For now.” He looked back to where the horses were waiting, saw Tarrant’s black mount grazing on a nasty-looking weed. Hesseth’s mare, as usual, was more circumspect. “I think this is as far as we should go without Tarrant. We’d better make camp and wait for him.”

She nodded.

He went to the black horse and gathered up its reins. “Come on,” he muttered. “Time to move.” Beside him Hesseth urged her own mount back, until the two animals faced away from the daunting panorama, back toward the mountain’s crest.

Without a word. That was the eerie part. Neither of them saying a thing, but moving in silent and perfect concord.

Both of them knowing that the thing to do was to cross over the crest again and descend partway down the mountainside, so that they might pitch their camp out of sight of the dismal valley. Not a good omen, he thought. Not good at all.

Tarrant returned on the fourth night, and it was clear that whatever slaughter he’d indulged in had renewed both his flesh and his spirit. His pale eyes gleamed with the subtle malevolence that Damien had learned to know and hate in the rakhlands, and his movements were a flawless admixture of arrogance and grace. But for all that he despised the Hunter’s facade of dark elegance, Damien was glad to see it back in place. The change meant recovery and recovery meant power—possibly more than Tarrant had wielded since landing in this twisted realm—and power was what they needed right now, pure and simple.

He took his place among them as though he had never been gone, and made no attempt to explain how he had passed his absent nights. Nor did Damien ask. If he had learned nothing else in his months with the Hunter, it was that there were some things he didn’t want to know.

The Neocount looked about the camp with discerning eyes—and looked about the currents as well, with hardly more effort—and then said, “You’ve been here a good day at least. I assume that means you’ve found the valley.”

“Over the ridge.” Damien nodded toward the east. “Not a pretty sight.”

The Hunter went where he indicated, and was soon lost from sight. Damien took the small pot of water from over the fire and placed it to one side, dropping in a few tea pellets. It could be a long wait.

The tea was fully brewed and he’d drunk down half of it by the time the Hunter returned. Tarrant reentered the circle of the fire without a word and sat, lowering himself with a grace and ease that Damien hadn’t seen in a long time.

Damn him. He must have killed a lot.

“What do you think?” Hesseth asked him.

“First tell me what you two saw.”

They looked at each other; at last it was Damien who answered. “A nasty, damp, dismal place with little sunlight and a host of terrain unpleasantries. You’d probably like it,” he added.

“Actually, I do. There’ll be fewer hours of direct sunlight in those depths—if any at all—which means that I can stay with you longer. If the mist holds steady throughout the day it might even be possible—in an emergency—for me to walk abroad at noon. That’s no small thing, you know.”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” Damien admitted.

“There’s no scent of our enemy in the currents, which either means that he hasn’t anticipated our taking this route, or that the new current doesn’t afford him access to us. Hopefully both. Given the force and the direction of the flow, I should be able to Obscure our progress from his eyes with little effort.”

“What about the Terata?” Hesseth asked him.

He seemed to hesitate. “I saw no trace of any creature I could label as such . . . but I’m bound by the same basic ignorance that you are. Until we either get closer to them or have better knowledge of what to look for, I don’t think my skills will be much help. I did catch the scent of human life, however.”

“Human?” Damien was startled. “I thought there were no people here.”

“So did I. Apparently we were wrong.”

“What kind of people?” Hesseth demanded.

“Hard to say at this point. But it’s a sizable group, I do know that. Several dozen at least.”

“Living down there?”

“It would appear so.”

“That implies that the Terata can’t be as terrible as we’d heard.” Hesseth’s tone was one of reason. “If they were, the humans would be dead or gone.”

The Hunter’s eyes fixed on her. In the darkness, pupils distended, they were black. Utterly black. Not merely a color, but a manifestation of emptiness.

“You saw what your people became here,” he said softly. “You witnessed what they did. Are you saying that whatever force molded the rakh couldn’t also mold humans, if it wanted to?”

“Do you think that’s the case here?” Damien asked him.

“I think that something is very wrong in this region, and to pass early judgment on anything—even our own species—is a mistake. I saw signs of faeborn creatures in the currents, but what does that mean? Any group of humans will create its own monsters in time. How can we assess their nature from here?”

“You sound more curious than afraid.”

The Neocount chuckled. “Does that surprise you?”

“No.” Despite himself he smiled. “I guess not.”

“We are what we are, Reverend Vryce. And I was a scholar long before I became . . . what I am.” A faint smile creased the corners of his lips. “Scholar enough to know what you fear most of all, Reverend. Tonight I’ll Work the weather as best I can, so that tomorrow the valley mist is lifted. If that’s possible,” he amended. “That will make it better for you, won’t it? If you have clear sight of your enemy’s turf?”

“I’d prefer it.”

“You should start toward the valley well before dusk. It will take you some hours to find a safe path down, and then time to descend. I’ll meet you at the bottom.” Though he was speaking to Damien, his eyes were fixed on Hesseth.

For a moment he was silent. The insects about them chirruped softly, to the accompanying crackle of the flames.

“The Kierstaad Protectorate,” he said at last, “is controlled by rakh.” His voice was soft, ever so soft, as though somehow he felt that excessive volume might wound her. “As is the one to the north of it. They’re nearly human in form, but their soul is clearly rakhene; the fae responds to them as it never would to a man.”

Damien thought he saw her shudder.

“Their disguise is supported by human sorcery. I don’t know the mechanics of it—I didn’t dare get that close—but the scent is unmistakable. And I think . . .” He hesitated. Glanced at Damien. “It was very similar to what I sensed by the crevasse. The same foreign touch.”

Hesseth drew in a quick breath, hissing. “Why?” she demanded. Of the air. Of no one. “What’s the purpose of it all?”

“Clearly they mean to control this continent,” the Hunter mused.

For a moment she just stared at him. Trying to absorb what he had said, with all its implications. “Maybe in the south,” she admitted. “Maybe . . . although that shouldn’t have turned them into monsters. But what about the north? What about the Matrias? They have control of the Church hierarchy, but what good does it do them? They still have to live among humans, hiding their own identity. Is that really power?”

“Power enough to affect human society,” Damien pointed out. “The Church here has its own record of atrocities. Maybe by a slow manipulation—”

“Are you saying that my people are responsible for the crimes of humans?” Her amber eyes flashed angrily.

“I’m saying that in addition to rakhene power, the one pattern we’ve seen here—over and over—is degradation of spirit. Does it really matter which species serves as a tool, if some master hand is at work? We’re all equally vulnerable.”

She sat back, and forced her bristling fur back into place. Damien thought he heard her growling softly.

“An interesting concept,” Tarrant mused. “It may give us our first real insight into the nature of our enemy.”

“You think he feeds on degradation?”

He shook his head. “The rakh have been affected, and faeborn demons don’t feed on that species. No, it’s got to be more than that . . . but this is a start. Any common link must be a clue to our enemy’s purpose.”

“And therefore to his identity,” Damien added.

“And therefore how to kill him,” Hesseth hissed.

The sheer venom in her voice startled Damien. Not because it surprised him, or because he hated their unknown enemy any less than she did, but because for the first time he was hearing her hatred in the context of other patterns. And what he heard disturbed him.

Are we changing also? Is that the price we pay to come here? Are we allowing this place to degrade our spirits as surely as it did with the rakh, and with my Church?

What happens if we reach the enemy at last, only to discover that in the end we are no better than his other puppets?

“Damien?” It was Hesseth.

“I’m all right,” he managed. But he wasn’t, and he knew she could hear it in his voice. “Something personal.”

“Indeed,” the Hunter said softly. He didn’t need to look at Tarrant to know that the man’s eyes were fixed on him, and that he was studying Damien with more than mere sight. “A night of prayer would do you good, Reverend Vryce. It would cleanse your spirit.”

He looked up sharply at Tarrant, expecting to see mockery in those pale eyes. But to his surprise there was none. Instead he saw something that might, in another man, be called compassion.

Was that possible? Had so much of the Hunter’s veneer been stripped away by their recent experience that he was capable of such an emotion? His cruel persona had been forged and tempered in the solitude of the Forbidden Forest, where his only companions were demons and wraiths and a few carefully chosen men who had likewise sacrificed their emotional birthright. Was it being worn so thin by the constant presence of humanity that a hint of the original Neocount could begin to peek through?

We’re making you more human, he mused.

The thought was strangely chilling.

He took out the Fire near morning, when the skies were a muted gray and Tarrant had left them in search of a daylight haven. The thick layer of varnish that protected the crystal vial had dulled, cataractlike, to a milky finish; the light that shone from within was hardly enough to illuminate his hand, and its miraculous warmth was nearly intangible even when he closed his palm around it.

But it was faith. Pure faith. Faith distilled into material substance, that had witnessed centuries of conflict. The faith of a million souls in the mission of his Church. The faith of a thousand priests in their last battle against evil. The faith of a single Patriarch in the one priest he sent east, believing—in his own words—that a single man might succeed where an army of men would fail.

May you be right, Holy Father. May I be worthy of your trust.

He prayed.

Rain fell in the morning, a brief thundershower. Soon after that the wind shifted direction, gusting with enough power that Damien felt uneasy about riding too near the edge of the steep granite drop. Whatever that combination amounted to down in the valley, it did manage to thin out the mist until it was no more than a translucent cloud. Through it, between the treetops, Damien could make out brown-black earth and an occasional clump of green. A gap in the trees revealed water—a river?—that snaked along the valley’s floor, gleaming blackly between the evergreen branches. Not a pleasant land, but not overtly threatening either; after they had spent a good hour studying it through Hesseth’s telescope, Damien felt immeasurably better about what lay ahead.

Getting down there was another matter. As they rode along the upper edge of the valley wall—hundreds of feet above the valley floor—Damien realized that descent might well prove impossible. The steep slope was mostly rock, which offered no sure footing for man or horse. Occasionally there were sections that sloped down more gently, or hills that abutted the valley wall from below, but none of those extended more than half the distance they needed, and all of them ended in steep granite inclines that would have been a challenge to a skilled mountain climber. Not to mention a skilled mountain climber with a horse.

But there had to be a way. The maps convinced him of that. The gap they had ridden through was labeled a pass, and what was a pass but a way through the mountains? If this course was useless, if it truly dead-ended, then no one would have assigned it that designation. Right? Logic said there had to be a way through, close enough that they could find it. Right?

He worked hard on believing that. It gave his mind something to focus on besides the terrain, which offered an unpleasant choice between heavily wooded slopes and sheer granite flats. More often than not they chose the latter, which meant riding dangerously close to the edge of that vast chasm. The horses seemed to prefer it to the woods, though, and Damien decided to indulge them. Trust the animals to know their own capacity.

At last, in the late afternoon, they found what looked like a moderately safe descent. Crumbled earth and fragmented granite offered a slope that was daunting but not downright suicidal, and they decided to try it. Half-sliding, the horses struggled for balance as they negotiated the treacherous slope. Their movement set rockfalls in motion that sculpted the mountainside anew even as they descended, and more than once the animals nearly went down. At one point the black horse began to limp and Damien had to stop to Heal it, knitting its damaged tendon together while gravel trickled past him like a river. All in all, he thought, the only thing worse than trying to descend this slope would be trying to climb it. Thank God that whatever happened they would not be coming back this way.

It took them more than an hour to reach the halfway point. By then the sun was already sinking below the crest of the western mountain, and the Core was right behind it. At least there would be stars for a while to guide them. By the light of the galaxy they fought for their descent, sometimes riding the horses and sometimes leading them. Finally, exhausted, they came to solid ground at last. By then even the Core had set, and Damien breathed deeply as he cast a last glance back toward the deadly slope, now cloaked in deepening shadow.

Tarrant was waiting for them.

Wordlessly Damien dismounted and handed him the reins of the Forest steed. He glanced up at Hesseth to see if there was any need to explain the arrangements—or to argue them—but clearly she had come to the same decision that he had. He swung up behind her with considerably more care than he had with Tarrant. She was small and fit easily in the slope of the saddle before him. There was a scent about her fur that was musky and warm and not unpleasant; he hoped that she found his own human odor at least tolerable. Between her acute sense of smell and his own semiclean state he had his doubts—he had done the best he could under the circumstances, but it was hard to stay truly clean when your changes of clothing were buried in a saddlepack more than fifty miles back—but in the name of diplomacy she made no comment about it. God bless her for that.

Silently, filled with foreboding, they descended the last mossy slope and entered the misty forest.

The valley mist wasn’t as bad as it might have been, thanks to Tarrant, but combined with the midnight’s darkness it had the effect of isolating them from the world outside. The few stars which were left were hidden from sight, and even the treetops overhead were thoroughly obscured by the drifting shroud of fog. Damien lit a lantern, which illuminated the ground about their feet but also the mist itself, so that it was impossible to see more than twenty or thirty feet in any direction. It was as if a shell had been erected around them, a perfect sphere of translucent substance that glimmered pale amber, reflecting the lamplight. It was uncomfortably claustrophobic, and dangerously limiting.

And if it’s this bad now, he thought as they rode, just wait till Tarrant’s conjured weather passes. This is probably heaven by contrast.

In silence they made their way, slowly and ever so carefully. Though normally Damien didn’t worry about mere predators—most larger animals shied away from humans, unless hunger made them desperate—their lack of visibility made him feel particularly helpless. He noticed that Hesseth was tense between his arms, and her ears pricked forward at the slightest sound, their tufted tips scanning the path ahead, beside, behind them. Only Tarrant seemed to be taking it all in his stride, but Damien knew him well enough now to guess at the tension that lay coiled tight inside him. The Hunter hated what he couldn’t control.

At last Tarrant signaled for them to stop. When Hesseth’s horse had pulled up alongside his own he dismounted, then knelt to touch the ground with one slender finger. Testing the currents. Tasting the earth-fae. Damien Worked his own sight and saw a powerful northerly flow, sparkling with alien secrets. He didn’t attempt a Knowing, but drank in the vision in its pure, uninterpreted form. Was this how adepts saw the world? Or was the richness of abstract power somehow translated into meaningful form in their brains, so that no formal Knowing was necessary?

“Odd.” Tarrant stood; his eyes were still fixed on the ground. “Very odd.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“I’m not sure you should.” The Neocount bit his lip as he studied the currents; Damien could see his pale eyes tracing the earth-fae’s motion, again and again. “There’s something there. Sorcery, I think. The trace is very faint; I can hardly make it out. And yet . . .”

When he didn’t finish the thought, Damien prompted him, “What?”

“By sorcery I mean that someone is consciously altering the fae. And yet, the patterns are not what I would associate with Working.” He looked up at Damien. “Not with a normal Working.”

“Rakh?” Hesseth demanded.

He shook his head. “No. The flavor of it is decidedly human.”

“Or demonic,” Damien said quietly.

“Yes,” the Hunter whispered. “That is the other possibility.”

“I don’t understand,” Hesseth protested.

Tarrant studied the currents again as he spoke; it was almost as if he were addressing the earth-fae, not her. “Demons are born of humankind. They feed on humans, they manipulate human fantasies, some even define themselves in human terms. Their fae-signature is therefore very similar to that of humans . . . sometimes so much so that it’s hard to tell the two apart.”

“But demons don’t do sorcery, do they?” Damien struggled to remember exactly what the textbooks said. “They don’t Work the fae like we do. Right? So their signature would have to differ in that respect.”

For a moment the Hunter said nothing. Then he said, very quietly, “There is one kind that does. I think. The trace might look like that, if one of them were active here.”

“One of who?”

The Hunter seemed about to speak, then shook his head instead. “Not until I know for sure. But if it is that . . .” There was an odd tone to his voice, that Damien was hard put to identify. “It would . . . complicate things.”

And then he realized what the tone was. Fear. The Hunter was afraid.

“You want to go on?” he asked. Suddenly not so sure himself.

Tarrant nodded. “It’s still far off. Perhaps if we get closer I can read its source. Let’s hope.”

He swung himself back up onto his horse’s back. Damien expected him to move his mount forward, and prepared to urge his own horse to follow. But Tarrant turned back to them instead, twisting about in the black leather saddle.

“There’s something else,” he told them. “Something I don’t understand at all. I sensed very clearly that there was human life in this valley, somewhere to the south of us.”

“That trace should be growing stronger as we travel toward it. A simple Knowing should reveal it.” He shook his head in frustration; his fine hair, mist-dampened, glistened in the lamplight. “It’s not there now,” he muttered.

“What? The trace?”

“Anything. Any sign of humanity. It’s as if no other humans were in these woods—as if no other humans have ever been in these woods. But I know that’s not the case. It simply can’t be.”

“An Obscuring?” Damien asked. “If a band of hostile humans wanted to hide themselves—”

“No.” He shook his head sharply, almost angrily. “Even that would leave a trace. A kind of echo, which should still be discernible. No, it’s as if . . . as if they ceased to exist, somehow. As if they ceased to ever have existed.”

“Are you sure of that?” Hesseth demanded.

He glared at her. “Do you doubt my skills?”

“You were misled in the rakhlands,” she reminded him.

The Hunter’s expression darkened. “I’m not a fool, you know. I do learn from my mistakes.” Anger flared coldly in his eyes. “I’m not saying there isn’t more to this than meets the eye. If human sorcery were a simple affair, then any idiot could guard himself against it. Obviously, anything I see in the currents might have been put there for our benefit. But all Workings leave some mark, even a mis-Knowing; now that I know to look for such things, I’m hardly likely to miss it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. By the tension in her body Damien could tell just how much those words were costing her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Obscure us if you can,” he said shortly. And he kneed his horse into sudden motion, so that it practically leapt ahead into the mist.

They traveled for over an hour through the fog-shrouded woodland, until their hair and their clothing and the horse’s flesh beneath them were all damp from the omnipresent moisture. With the day’s miserly warmth long gone from the earth the air grew more and more chill, the mist more and more icy. They moved at a slow but steady pace, and Damien and Hesseth took turns walking so as not to push their communal horse past endurance. If the day had been pleasant, the exercise would have been welcome; as it was, he was glad when at last Tarrant signaled for a break.

He brushed the horse down a bit, more to reassure it than for any other reason; there was no real hope of getting the animal dry. It was more a ritual of normalcy than anything else, a chore so automatic that his mind could wander while his muscles worked. Trying to untangle Tarrant’s words in his own mind, to come up with an explanation of who or what might be ahead of them . . . but if the Neocount of Merentha couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation, how could he hope to?

We need more information, he thought. And he prayed that the information would come to them before the danger with which it was surely allied.

They rested and ate in silence, and in silence they remounted and resumed their course. Tarrant led the way. Damien sensed a growing unease in him—dare he call it fear?—but he had no way to address the issue, no safe way to draw him out on it. They would just have to function in ignorance until the Neocount decided that it was time to share his fears.

The forest changed as they traveled farther south. Subtly at first, one species of tree giving way to another, one type of clinging vine giving way to its cousin. It was hard to say exactly where or when the flora began to seem threatening, or to pinpoint what was wrong with it. All the elements of a normal forest were in place, along with the smell of rot and a hundred varieties of mold that the omnipresent mist fostered. If anything, it should be a surprise that plant life growing under these conditions should seem so normal.

Now vines proliferated, and they were not the healthy green vines of home. Thick ropy stems twined about the trunks of trees, sprouting spongy leaves that looked like some kind of fungus. They were not even green, these vines, but a kind of ghostly white that shimmered wetly in the party’s lamplight. Damien went out of his way to see that the mare didn’t touch them. In some places they had grown so thick that a mat of tangled vines hung between the trees like sheets, and small mantled insects scurried in between the knots and the funguslike leaves. Toward the treetops the vines took on a green cast, but that was because they had sucked the color from their hosts; dead branches swayed in the chill night breeze, moldy bark fingers with white leaves at their tips. The whole of it reeked of rot and decay, and Damien had no doubt that thousands of tiny scavengers were eating their way through the dying trees’ flesh, so that all that was left in the end was a ghostly shell, a husk of dead bark, a grotesque trellis for the clinging vines.

It’s just nature, he told himself. Species have adapted to meet the special demands of this place. But that didn’t seem right, somehow. Tarrant’s Forest had been horrible, but all the elements were interlocked in perfect biological harmony; you could sense that balance, even though you were repelled by its tenor. But here . . . there was too much death, he decided. Too much decay. It was as if Nature’s precious balance had somehow been overburdened, as if something had been introduced or removed—or changed—that threw the whole system out of kilter. What would the vines feed on when all their hosts were dead? They rode past dense mats of tangled vines, that covered their trees like a blanket. What happened when that growth became so thick that sunshine could no longer reach the host tree’s leaves? If one listened closely enough, could one hear the sounds of a forest dying? The moans of an ecosystem in collapse? The thought of it made him shiver, so that Hesseth twisted around to see what was wrong with him. Her expression was grim, and the thin ridge of scar tissue which was all that remained of her inner eyelid was drawn in as far is it would go. So. She felt it, too. There was some comfort in that, at least.

They rode for hours, with brief stops so that he and Hesseth and the horses could eat, and so that Tarrant could study the currents. The rotting forest seemed to close in about them as soon as they stopped, for which reason Damien and Hesseth ate as quickly as they could, and took no more rest than was absolutely necessary. Even Tarrant seemed uncomfortable in this place. And when you really thought about it, Damien reflected, didn’t that make sense? The Hunter was a creature of order and precision, whose creative genius had embraced not only man’s faith, but nature in all her vast complexity. Was there any greater ugliness than this, an ecosystem corrupted past saving?

After a time—no telling how long, he had lost all sense of measuring the hour—the Hunter turned east. They followed him without question, trusting in his sense of purpose. Overhead the vine-blanket thickened, and spongy tendrils hung down low enough to brush their hair as they passed. The sour smell of decay was nigh on overwhelming, even to Damien’s merely human senses; he could only guess at how much Hesseth was suffering. Lower and lower the tangled masses hung, until at last Tarrant had to draw his sword and cut a path through them in order to continue. The coldfire light of the Worked steel was reflected by the mists about them, turning the whole world a cold silver-blue. Tendrils of vine shattered like glass as he cut through them, tangled mats becoming shards of ice in an instant, glittering like stars as they fell.

And then they were in the open again. Tarrant cut a tunnel through the last thick tangle—a veritable wall of white vines and fungus, with mold clinging to every available surface—and then the vines were behind them, and the trees also, and the party looked out upon an expanse of water so clean and fresh that just looking at it made Damien feel renewed.

Tarrant nodded toward the water. “I thought that under the circumstances the river might offer you the best campsite.” His choice of words made Damien glance up at the sky. No good; there was still enough mist to keep him from seeing how exactly dark the sky was. But Tarrant’s manner made it clear that dawn was coming, and in this place it would take him some time to find a suitable shelter. “You sure you wouldn’t rather stay with us?” He hesitated. “There’s no shelter for me here. I regret.” He chose for some reason of his own not to transform on the spot, but made his way back toward the midnight confines of the forest. Damien watched as the vine-tunnel swallowed him, then reluctantly turned his attention to making camp. He was worried. Very worried. He had made the offer more as a gesture than as a serious suggestion; he knew the Hunter well enough to know how much he valued his daytime privacy. If Tarrant would actually prefer to stay with them, if he would prefer Damien’s presence to whatever was out there . . . that was a sobering concept, indeed.

Daylight. Sort of. The mist turned a deep gray, then a dingy half-gray, but got no lighter. Between the steep walls of the valley and the fog that attended its floor, the sunlight was hard pressed to penetrate. At noon the swirling fog turned white at last, but it was only a brief respite; within an hour the world was gray once more. It reminded Damien of the false dawn of the arctic region, where the late autumn sun teased the eye once a day but never fully rose. It was depressing there, too, he remembered.

There were things that came out of the fog, faint wisps of faeborn life that drifted through the airborne miasma like some ethereal fish. They had no solidity, these creatures, and their forms were as changeable as the mist, but lack of material substance made them no less dangerous. Evidently Tarrant’s presence had kept them at bay during the night, but now—with the light so dim that it could barely hurt them—they drifted toward Damien with the blind instinct of demonic hunger, sensing in his flesh and his human vitality a feast beyond all measure. God alone knew what part of him they wanted; he didn’t stop to figure it out. When two strokes of his sword convinced him that solid weapons were of no use in this case—they passed through the fog-wraiths with little more effect than a wire passing through smoke—he resorted to a Working. He drove them back as far as he could with the threat of a Dispelling, then crafted crude wards to keep them from coming back. His hands shook as he Worked, for he knew how risky it was to spend so much time immersed in the currents; an earthquake now would fry his brain before he knew what hit him. But at last he was done, and he took the eight stones he had chosen and placed them about the circumference of the camp in a rough circle. The coarse rocks were far from ideal for ward-making—the best ward hosts were carefully inscribed, precisely made, symbolically powerful items—but they’d have to do for now. Each of them had been bound to a pattern that would tap into the earth-fae if one of the demonlings tried to approach, and would use that power to drive them away. Since rocks had no brains, the earth-fae could surge all it liked and not do them an ounce of harm.

Hesseth watched him in some amusement, but spared him any derisive comment. Which was good. Because the damned things hadn’t gone after her, had they?

Only when he was done and had rejoined her by the fire did she venture, “He must have been right, you know.”

“Who?”

“Tarrant. About there being humans here.”

He looked back toward the forest, where the last of the fae-creatures had fled. “There’d have to be, wouldn’t there? And a lot of them, too. It takes more than a single mind to manifest numbers like that.” Now that the creatures were gone it was hard to visualize them, but he tried. How odd they were . . . and how utterly logical that they should exist. “It’s fear of the mist,” he reflected aloud. “That’s what spawned them. Fear of the mist and what it hides. The humans here must have come from outside this valley, and they found the mist threatening. So that when their negative emotions began to sculpt the earth-fae, it took that form. Foglike. Amorphous.” He looked back at the fire, and tried to think. Tried to make it all come together. “There are no more traditional demons here, are there? At least none that we’ve seen yet. Yet most human communities produce a folkloric repertoire—vampires and succubi, human distortions—long before they come up with anything as abstract as this. Strange,” he mused. Something foggy with bright red eyes began to drift in from across the river; when it reached his nearest ward, it shivered and stopped. “I wonder what caused it?”

“Tarrant will probably know,” she murmured. Watching as the demonling turned away, drifting into the mist beyond the wards.

Tarrant didn’t know.

When he returned that night he paused briefly at the outer boundary of the campsite, and gazed upon the ward-stones one after another. Only when he was done, did he join them by the fireside. “These aren’t strong enough to matter,” he said to Damien, “but you should bear in mind that the power I draw on is demonic in nature. Your wards define me as an enemy.”

Damien winced; he should have anticipated that. “Sorry.”

As they doused the fire and saddled the horses, Damien and Hesseth told him about the strange demonlings. He shared with them his own growing frustration at being unable to get a fix on the humans who must be somewhere in these woods. “It’s not an Obscuring,” he insisted. His tone was almost angry, it seemed to Damien. “But what, then? What could make a dozen or more humans vanish from the currents, so that the earth-fae didn’t acknowledge their presence?”

There was no answer for that, and no other option but to go on. They rode back into the strangling forest, and for once Damien was glad for its closeness. It was comforting to see something besides a wall of gray fog, even if it was this twisted flora.

They spent the night in silence, riding through mile after mile of the alien forest, trying to make out its features by lamplight. Tarrant could see by the fae-light, of course, and Hesseth’s nocturnal eyes worked well in the dark, but for Damien it was a constant strain. Add to that the fact that the forest was changing, and that each mile was stranger than the last, and it was no surprise that by the time Tarrant declared it a night he was exhausted.

Vines strangling trees. Then vines in shreds, white sap dripping from their ravaged ends. Then black things that scuttled up and down the tree trunks, carrying bits of vine and spongy leaves in their mouth. Then larger things, spiderlike, that ate those. Rodents that fed on the spiders. They weren’t intermingled, as natural species would have been, but existed in waves so populous that each new life-form devastated the forest anew, leaving a wasteland of dead trees and shriveled vines and bones. So very many bones. They littered the ground like dead leaves in autumn. Piles so thick that they cracked beneath the horses’ hooves with every step. The smell of decay, of rotting flesh, was so overwhelming in places that Damien wrapped a strip of cloth over his nose and mouth and Worked it to act as a barrier. Hesseth looked so nauseous that he offered to do the same for her, and to his surprise she accepted. Whatever Tarrant did to deal with the smell was private and undiscernible, but Damien was sure he did something. The Hunter was too fastidious a man to put up with that kind of stink for long.

And then, at last, they were back at the river. It was wider now, and the water gleamed as it rippled over a rocky bed. Damien started forward toward it, meaning to gather some river water for their dinner, but Tarrant’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“What is it?”

“The pattern of this region. Think about it. One species takes root, then overbreeds and destroys the environment. So another is introduced which establishes balance for a while, until it, too, overbreeds. And then another. And another.”

It took him a minute to realize what the Hunter was driving at. “You think someone evolved those life-forms?”

“Nature is infinitely complex, Reverend Vryce. Who knows that better than I? A natural ecosystem is a delicately balanced creation, with all sorts of checks and balances that are continuously evolving in tandem. Nothing like this. The simplicity of it, and the waste . . . I sense a human hand behind it. Very inexperienced, limited in understanding, perhaps overwhelmed by its failure to control. Because in order to establish a new species properly, you have to make sure it comes equipped with counterspecies: predators, parasites, diseases, degraders. That wasn’t done here. Such power, without understanding the consequences of applying it. No wonder there was such destruction.”

“Each life-form had its own territory,” Hesseth pointed out.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps instead each life-form was created at some central point, and then allowed to spread. The vines first, and then the animals that fed on them. Predators for them, when they were out of control. And again. Each species spreading out from that central point, like waves across the region. So that as we travel—”

“We’re heading toward that center,” Damien said suddenly.

The Hunter nodded. “That, and we’re due for the next creation. The last was rodents, and large ones. Anything feeding on them would also be a threat to humankind, and thus to their creators.”

“Insects could kill them off,” Hesseth offered. “Or even diseases. Those wouldn’t have to endanger humans.”

“Correct. And I would have used the latter, if this were my game. But whoever’s playing God with this ecosystem lacks that kind of subtlety. So what would be a safe killer, from our sorcerer’s point of view? Another small creature? Too inefficient. Something large? Too dangerous. Perhaps something large but rooted down, so that it isn’t free to roam. Then it could be avoided. But you can’t just scatter these killers at random, can you? The animals would learn to avoid them. They would have to be in hiding, and concentrated some place where all the animals would have to go . . .”

He studied the ground for a moment, then bent down and picked up a rock. It was flat, Damien noted, very thin, and about the size of his hand. With a flick of his wrist he launched it out toward the water. It hit the surface hard near the shore and then skipped several times, and was swallowed by the fog before they could see it sink.

“Very neat,” Damien said. “But I don’t see how—”

The water erupted. From beneath, the spot where the stone first struck the surface something burst upward in a spurt of foam. It was green, and glistening, and it whipped about wildly in search of the cause of the commotion. Damien saw green leaves and slender tendrils, with something sharp and white at their center. Hungry. God. He could feel the hunger, could feel it freezing his limbs, making him unable to fight, unable to struggle . . .

He shook his head violently and forced himself to turn away. It wasn’t easy. After a moment the noise subsided. After another moment the feeling of helplessness did also. He turned back to the water, saw nothing but smooth ripples on its surface.

“Good God,” he whispered. “What was that?”

“Our sorcerer’s last gambit, I assume. What will happen when this one goes out of control is anyone’s guess. Fortunately, the next creation will probably be a river creature also. It should mean easier traveling for a while.”

“If you’re right,” Hesseth said, “if this is all the work of humans . . . then how far are we from them? Can you guess that?”

“Pretty close, I would imagine. How many more steps in the food chain ladder are possible before something decides it likes the taste of human flesh? I think we should be very careful from now on,” he warned. “These things are getting larger each time, and far more dangerous. In the end it may not be the humans here who are the greatest threat, but these creations.”

“You still can’t Know anything about the humans here?” Damien asked.

The Hunter turned cold eyes on him. “I can’t. I’ve tried. It’s as if they disappeared.”

“Or were eaten?” Hesseth offered.

“I’d have sensed that,” he responded shortly.

Be careful. That was what Damien thought as they rode along the shoreline and looked for a place to camp. Be careful. As if they hadn’t been before. As if the Hunter had to tell them a thing like that.

He’s worried, he thought. Possibly even frightened. Has anyone ever defied his power before, in quite this way?

And if he’s frightened . . . where the hell does that leave us?

They searched for a safer campsite along the rocky shore.

“Damien. Damien. Get up.”

The whisper invaded his dreams. It took him a minute to realize whose it was, and why it sounded so urgent.

“Damien. Wake up. Please.”

Then he understood. The dream shattered into a thousand fragments. Sleep was gone in an instant.

“What is it?” he croaked, sitting up. His throat was dry. “What?”

He saw that Hesseth was armed. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. Her ears were flattened against her head and her fur was bristling. “I can smell them.”

As he quickly got to his feet, he looked for cover, someplace safe to shoot from. But they had chosen this spot because it was out of the forest but far enough from the river, and not for its martial features. He damned himself—and Tarrant—for that shortsightedness.

“Where?” he whispered.

She nodded toward the south. And hesitated.

“Many,” she breathed at last.

Damn. Damn. Damn. He chose an outcropping behind them which offered limited cover. No way to hide the horses. No time to obliterate the camp. He motioned for her to crouch down beside him, behind the low ridge.

He could hear them now. Rustling. Voices. An odd mixture of caution and carelessness, low voices and heavy footfall. And damn, there were a lot of them. You couldn’t make that kind of noise with only a handful.

They came closer, moving from up the south, and then their direction shifted. West. That meant they were encircling the camp. The voices were silent now, wary of being heard by their quarry.

So they knew where the camp was, and most likely knew what they were hunting. Damn. In another few minutes he and Hesseth would be surrounded, and then there would be no way out but through the river. Could they sneak away quickly enough, going far enough north that they escaped the deadly circle . . . but no, that meant leaving the horses behind along with all their supplies. And there was no way they could travel all the miles they had to with neither mounts nor gear.

He felt desperation grab hold of him—that, and a cold calculation, as he realized where their only chance lay. He reached out for Hesseth, met her eyes, nodded toward the horses. We grab them, his expression said, and run for it. North. They could stay by the river—but not too close—where the terrain would allow a horse to gallop, and maybe they could just break out of this. They’d make noise all right, lots of it, but no human feet could outrun a horse. It was a long shot, to be sure but he figured it was the only chance they had.

But as he sprinted forward toward his mount the vines at the edge of the forest parted, and he knew that it was too late; if they were coming into the open, it meant that the camp was already surrounded. There was no time to get back behind the ridge now, for what little shelter it provided. And besides, if he did that, he’d be revealing Hesseth’s position. Let her have a chance.

Heart pounding, he braced his weapon against his shoulder and waited for the enemy to reveal itself.

The first thing he saw was a face. A horrible visage, with slashes of red above and below distorted human features. He was so on edge that it took him a minute to realize what it was. Beside it another appeared, equally grotesque, crudely painted. They were the faces of his childhood nightmares, the masks that his unconscious mind had assigned to demons of the night long before he had actually seen any. And masks they were, in a very real sense. He watched in amazement as more and more armed figures came out of the woods, until the campsite was surrounded. They were fierce, these warriors who wore the demon-masks; their dirty bodies were painted with the colors of blood and death, and bones were tied to their weapons. Their wooden spears and crude arrows were all stained brown or black about the tip, and Damien had no doubt that it was blood of many kills which had seeped down into the wood.

He should have moved before they were in position. Or gone back to Hesseth. He should have done something.

But he couldn’t. He just stared.

They were children.

More then twenty of them surrounded the camp now; he didn’t dare turn his head to count. Few stood higher than his chest. At least a handful were small enough that they couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old at the most, and the rest seemed little older. Though it was hard to make out their shapes between the grotesque masks they wore and the leather vests and breeches which had been similarly painted, Damien would have wagered that not more than one or two of them had reached their teens yet.

How bizarre. How utterly, horribly bizarre.

They were all armed, and though their weapons were crudely made they were undoubtedly effective. As they came slowly into the clearing, Damien realized that he had only two choices. He could try to cut them down, using his size, his strength, and his experience as an advantage to counteract their numbers. Or he could surrender, bide his time until Tarrant returned. The latter went against his every instinct, and he found himself bracing for battle, calculating just how and when he should move against so many . . . but they were children. Children! How would it feel, to cut down those tiny bodies? Could he do it? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. His hands, clasped about the weapon, trembled slightly.

Prodded from her hiding place, Hesseth joined him. He heard her growling low in her throat as she scanned the crowd surrounding them, as unhappy as he was about the choices.

“Who are you?” he demanded of them. “What do you want?”

It was a lean boy—one of the tallest—who responded. “You come with us. Now. Put down your weapons and come—”

“Or we kill you,” another one interrupted. She was a tiny thing, with bedraggled bits of blonde hair hanging down about her shoulders.

“Do it fast,” the lean boy commanded.

Damien looked at Hesseth, and saw in her eyes a reflection of his own inner turmoil. Perhaps a moment ago he could have pretended that they weren’t human, could have managed to close his eyes and mow them down with sword and with sorcery . . . but not now. Not now that they’d spoken. All his human instinct cried out against it. Children were to be protected, not murdered.

If they had moved against him, he could have fought. If they had threatened his life. If they had seemed so angry or irrational that he thought they might kill him outright rather than take him prisoner. If . . . anything.

But they didn’t. And they weren’t.

He lowered his weapon. The children waited. He looked at Hesseth—her ears were still flat against her head and she was hissing softly, but she nodded—and he laid the weapon down. And stepped back. It was little more than a gesture; between his strength and Hesseth’s claws they were far from helpless in this crowd. But it seemed to be what the masked children wanted.

He watched while they moved into the clearing, gathering up the supplies and taking hold of the horses’ reins. They didn’t move like children, Damien thought. Too awkward. Too stiff. It was hard to watch them closely, he discovered. Hard to focus on one for any length of time. Was that the remnants of an Obscuring? It was an odd sensation.

At last the camp had been gathered up, except for those few items the children didn’t value. Damien’s weapon had been taken up, along with Hesseth’s. A slender girl with a predatory mask carried his sword in its harness; it was taller than she was.

“Who are they?” Hesseth whispered. “What are they?”

The tall boy heard her. As the children drew close about them, preparing to herd Hesseth and Damien back into the forest and to God knows where, he took a stance opposite them with his feet spread wide and his spear planted firmly in the ground by his side. A challenging stance. A triumphal stance.

“Terata,” he told them. And though a mask obscured his features, Damien had the distinct impression that he was grinning. “We’re the Terata.”

23

They tied his hands behind his back. It went against his grain to allow it, but he saw no other option. He had already surrendered, after all. As they bound the coarse rope tightly about his wrists he did what he could to tense his arms, to thicken his wrists, and they seemed not to notice. That should net him some slack later. When they left him to work on Hesseth, he pulled at his bonds in several directions, testing the sophistication of the arrangement. He was pleased to feel it give slightly, which meant that although he had been tied tightly, he had not been tied well; between that and the small slack he had earned, he should be able to work himself free later.

When they were satisfied that their prisoners were bound, the Terata led them into the forest. Spears prodding their backs to keep them moving, they forced Damien and Hesseth through the thick brush that flanked the river, then into the shadowy realm beyond. Once Damien fell, and the sharp point of a weapon stabbed between his shoulder blades; he had to bite his lip to keep from cursing them aloud.

They’re children, he reminded himself. Struggling to his feet without benefit of his hands. He could feel blood trickling down between his shoulder blades, adhering his woolen shirt to his back. Self-indulgent by nature, not yet sophisticated enough to value self-control . . . you anger them now, and there’s no telling what they’ll do. Be careful, Vryce.

Where had they come from, these painted infants? What chain of circumstances had brought them to this place? He could only wonder as he stumbled through the shadowy forest, trying to keep his footing for fear that some fledgling warrior might run him through if he didn’t. Hesseth seemed to be doing well enough, though the set of her ears and the soft hiss of her breathing made it clear she was far from happy about the turn their travels had taken.

Yeah, he thought darkly. That makes two of us.

The Terata led them south. Through a forest that had been stripped of its lower leaves by some gnawing creature—another sorcerous creation?—and past trees that had been girdled by toothmarks, robbed of their sap so that the upper limbs dried out and died. Long bark fingers scraped down from the heights above them, brushing their hair as they passed. Now that Tarrant had pointed out the pattern of life here, Damien could see it clearly. And if the Neocount had wondered what type of mind would create such creatures, now Damien understood. Limited minds. Untested, untrained. Minds that could not yet encompass the awesome complexity of Nature, nor make allowances for her excesses.

Children.

That meant at least one of them was a sorcerer, he reminded himself. If not more than one. And the power required to Work an entire species was no small thing; these Terata might lack adult sophistication, but in raw power they could probably hold their own with any mature sorcerer. A sobering thought to consider as he fought his way across beds of dead twigs, pulling loose from the thorns that snagged his clothing as he passed.

Then something loomed ahead of him that brought him to a stop. For once no spear-point prodded him onward. He gazed at the wall of tangled brush before him and wondered how they meant to hack their way through it with nothing more than spears and arrows and a few short knives. Had the children traveled this route before? It seemed unlikely-

Light flared brightly to one side of him. He turned and saw one boy holding a torch, whose smoky flame illuminated the woods and the mist surrounding them. Then he reached down and tore up some grasses, which he thrust into the flame; black smoke coiled upward, thick and choking. He then passed the torch to the lean boy at the front of the pack, the one who had spoken to Damien. With a quick glance at the prisoners the boy moved to where the barrier-brush began, and for a moment stood still, studying it. The light of the torch glinted on the tips of vast thorns, as long as a man’s hand and as thick about the base as a finger. Liquid glistened on the needle-sharp tips, and something about the way it gleamed made Damien very uneasy about coming in contact with it. It seemed to him that the brush seemed to rustle slightly as the boy drew near—or was that his imagination working overtime?—and then the lean Terata thrust the torch forward so that smoke billowed into the brush, obscuring the nearer branches-

The brush shuddered. Thorns twitched. Damien watched in horrified amazement as branches which had seemed dry and brittle drew back like arms, their glistening thorns trembling as if in rage. The boy thrust the torch even farther forward, and tangled limbs whipped back as if trying to escape him. There was a hole in the tangled wall now, and the boy worked at it—moving the torch from one side to the other, threatening back whatever branches seemed to be returning to their place—until the opening was nearly as wide as a man. Then another child, a small girl, came forward with a second torch and lit it from his; with her help he managed to enlarge the opening until it formed a crude tunnel perhaps six feet in height, and wide enough for a horse to pass through.

“Go!” he ordered. The Terata moved quickly. The nearer limbs of the thornbush shook as they passed, and Damien had no doubt that if the smoke thinned for a moment the branches would close in upon the travelers. But the girl and the lean boy held the thorns at bay with practiced skill, and even enlarged the opening enough that when the horses passed through their manes hardly brushed the nearest branches. Damien dared to work a Knowing as he entered the thorny tunnel, and what he learned nearly caused him to stumble. But then a number of small hands pushed him and he was through, falling to his knees on the rocky earth a safe distance from the grasping branches.

When they all were through, the girl and boy followed. With them gone, the smoke cleared in an instant. The branches which had drawn back snapped toward them with sound like a whip cracking, but the children had gauged their distance well; the longest thorns fell inches short of their target, and all the convulsions of branches which followed were incapable of getting them any closer.

As he watched the vast plant writhe in frustrated hunger, Damien wished that Tarrant were with them. And not just because his power would have been so welcome.

You were wrong, Hunter. They didn’t put their killer in the river at first. They didn’t have that much foresight. They rooted their creation in the ground and let it grow, until the animals it fed on had learned to avoid it and the only prey left to it were the Terata.

He could hear the branches twitching as he got to his feet. Struggling for food. Starving, in the midst of plenty.

But these children do learn from their mistakes, he thought grimly. Watching as the Terata extinguished their smoking torches. Something to remember.

The miles fell behind them with painful slowness. It was hard for Damien to match his stride to that of the children; for all of their youthful energy, their legs were so much shorter than his own that every step was a struggle to match their pace. When he moved too quickly a spear-point in his back or a knife-point in his side reminded him to slow down; he didn’t look down to check but would have bet that his body was spotted with blood from the treatment. Hesseth seemed to hold her own, moving with feline grace among the children, like a sleek predator among awkward browsers.

And their movement was all wrong, he thought. Watching the three leaders of the group ahead of him, the others out of the corners of his eyes. For all that they were children, for all that their bodies were still growing and therefore awkward, there was a wrongness to their motion that went beyond that. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was—when he tried to focus on them his vision grew hazy, until he had to focus his attention straight ahead to bring his eyes under control once more—but some deep-set instinct warned him that it was wrong, that something about these children was even more strange than it appeared, and that he’d damned well figure out what it was before his life depended on that understanding.

Half a day later. Well past noon. Exhaustion numbed his limbs, his mind, his hopes. The dismal forest thinned at last, leaving only the serpentine mist curling above muddy earth. He could smell the river, though he couldn’t see it. Hesseth looked bedraggled. He felt no better. The awkward pace had drained them both.

At last they came to a place where the river spread out before them, glistening coldly in the filtered sunlight. It was no longer a free-moving stream of water that gushed over rocks and through tree-lined channels, but a vast lake whose still surface rippled softly as far as the eye could see. Trees had fallen into the water at various points and lake plants had taken root in their bark, sprouting branches that covered the water’s surface like a web. Green fronds waved softly in the current as small animals scampered across the tangled branches, as comfortable inches above the water’s surface as they had once been in the treetops. Here and there Damien could see a sandbar peeking through a bed of reeds, mountain mud carried down from the heights by the swift-running river. And in the center . . .

An island arose some half-mile in the distance, that was clearly their destination. The base was a vast mound of boulders, sparsely covered with greenery. Flood waters had left their mark a good ten feet above the current water line, and only above there did trees and larger bushes flourish—but those were twisted creations, whose gnarled trunks and contorted branches seemed grimly well suited to serve as the Terata’s home. Damien wondered if the children had sculpted these life-forms as well, or if they had learned enough of a lesson from their other attempts to leave this island in its natural state.

They started toward the water, prodding Damien forward. He regarded the lake’s surface with some trepidation, remembering the waterborn predators that lived upriver. But though it seemed that there was no solid land ahead of them, the children led them through a matted path in the rushes to a mud bar that stretched some ten yards into the water. He stepped out upon it gingerly, glad that the horses weren’t intelligent enough to understand the risk. But the ground beneath his feet was quite solid, not like mud at all—so much not like mud that he paused for an instant to Work his sight, wondering what it was that he truly walked upon. And his Working failed. No, not failed exactly; it was more like slid off. As if the space he was trying to focus on was made of the slickest glass, and his Sight had gone skittering off its surface.

Strange. He had never experienced anything like it before, could come up with no explanation for the odd effect. Tarrant had once turned his Workings aside, back when they had first met, but the sensation was nothing like this. Was this how the Hunter had felt when his best attempts at a Knowing had netted impossible results? Ominous.

The lead boy had reached the end of the mud bar, but though water seemed to lap at his ankles the ground was as solid as ever. He turned slightly to the left as he stepped off into the water, and the others were careful to follow. Damien braced himself as he came to the end of the bar, knowing that if these children were willing to wade in the cold mountain water, then it was probably quite safe-

And then he stepped down, and didn’t get wet. Nor did the ground beneath him feel like it now looked: a treacherous surface of pitted gravel and water-polished stones, slicked by slime and algae and sported about by thousands of tiny fish. No, it felt more like . . . wood. Was that possible? Old wood, weatherworn and mist-dampened. He tried to Work his sight again—nearly stumbled doing so—but if the water beneath his feet was some kind of illusion, he damned well couldn’t See through it. Nor could he See any sign of the region having been Worked, although there should have been something. Every Working leaves its mark, Damien thought, as he followed carefully in the children’s footsteps. Without exception. But if there was a Worker’s mark on this, he damned well couldn’t see it.

Tarrant could make it out. Tarrant could make sense of this. He glanced up at the sky—or rather, up at the mist overhead—and judged it to be very near nightfall. A sense of relief flooded his nerves at the thought, and he felt his muscles relax a tiny bit.

All we have to do is make it till he gets here.

At the end of the unseen bridge was a visible line of stairs, crudely cut into the base of the island. Damien climbed them carefully, knowing that his bound hands would be unable to afford him balance should anything go wrong. Behind him he could hear the children struggling with the horses, who were clearly, unhappy about the route. But in the end the animals were coerced into climbing—with sorcery, perhaps?—and soon they had all gained the top of the island, to gaze out upon the Terata camp.

It was, as the Terata themselves were, fragmented and ill-executed. Skin tents betrayed by their shapes that the staffs upholding them were less than perfectly arranged, and indeed several had collapsed; there were children working on them even as Damien watched. A foul smell came and went with the breeze, from skins that were less than perfectly tanned, and the odor of long-dead meat seemed to hang about the camp like a haze. And the children! There were at least two dozen here, in addition to Damien’s band of captors, including several that were mere babes, hardly able to walk. Without their masks and fierce weapons they looked strangely vulnerable, and though their flesh seemed healthy enough, Damien thought he caught a hint of past abuse in their eyes, the haunted look of bruised souls.

When they saw his party, the children turned and cheered, and gathered about them every bit as gaily as youngsters begging candy from adults. The little faces were dirt-smeared and sunburned, but they looked healthy enough. If you didn’t look in their eyes.

Flanked by cavorting youngsters, the prisoners were led to the center of the rocky isle. There a cave mouth gaped, its root-fringed darkness leading down into the depths of the island. The children pushed Damien forward, and clearly meant for him to enter it. He glanced back at Hesseth. She wasn’t any more happy about it than he was, but she seemed reasonably confident. At last he nodded and ducked through the opening, to the accompaniment of blows. The ground was slick beneath his feet and he almost fell, but he managed to stay upright and get out of the way before Hesseth slipped down into the darkness. When they were both inside, a thick grate of wood was put into place over the opening, and Damien heard some kind of latch being fixed in place around it. Thick tree limbs, bound together with coarse rope. Hard to break through, but not impossible. He was glad that the children hadn’t taken up metalworking.

“Turn around,” Hesseth whispered softly. When he did so, he felt her lean down to where his hands were bound; the damaged skin of her face rubbed against his wrist as she gnawed him free of his bonds. He untied her then, and rubbed some life back into his hands. Good enough for now. It would only be hours before Tarrant returned to them, and he felt confident they could protect themselves that long.

By the fading light of the sun which filtered down through the grate, he studied their prison. It was a rough space, muddy, replete with the nooks and crannies that nature delighted in. For a brief moment he considered crawling into one of those narrow passageways in the hopes that it would lead to freedom, but then he remembered the children. Tiny, lithe, and insatiably curious, they would have followed every path to its end long before declaring this space a prison, and if there were an opening they would have sealed it long ago. So much for that. He shifted slightly so that his own shadow didn’t blacken the rock face before him, turned to the left-

And saw eyes.

Hesseth must have seen them at the same time that he did, for he felt her sharp intake of breath beside him. For a moment he thought that the two gleaming points were the eyes of an animal, but then he remembered the size and scale of his hosts. And yes, it was a child. No doubt about that. A frightened child who scrabbled backward as he approached, keening terror low in its throat. A girl? Hard to say in this darkness, but the voice sounded female.

“Get away from me!” she shrieked. Her voice was hoarse and broken, as if she had bruised it by screaming too much. “Get back! I know your God. He can’t have me!”

He froze where he was. The cave was suddenly so silent that he could hear his heart pounding. Then, slowly, he took a step backward. The eyes didn’t move. Another step. When there were perhaps twelve feet of distance between himself and the owner of those eyes, it seemed to him that she relaxed somewhat.

“Who are you?” he asked gently. Her strange accusation still ringing in his ears. Your God can’t have me. “Why are you here?”

“Keep away!” she gasped. “Keep them away from me!”

Them.

The children?

What was going on here?

He looked at Hesseth. The rakh-woman’s face—and thus her expression—were lost in shadow. But he thought he saw her nod.

“All right,” he said gently. “We won’t come near you.” He chose a spot on the muddy ground that was smoother than most, and sat. A cool wind blew in through the grating, chilling his sweat. He could sense those eyes fixed on him, studying him, but he tried not to meet them. Animals sometimes needed time to accustom themselves to the smell of a newcomer; perhaps in her fear she was subject to a similar instinct. Let her take her time, then. Time was one thing they had.

After many long minutes of shadowy silence, a rustling from outside the gate alerted Damien to someone’s approach. It was a young boy, maskless but coated with war paint and mud, carrying a carved wooden spear. He came over to the grate and stared inside the makeshift prison—and something burst from the far corner, something small and filthy and very, very scared, moving with a suddenness that made Damien jump. The small girl ran to the grate and fell to her knees before it, clutching its bars, her whole body shaking with terror. “Take them away,” she gasped. “Please! He’s a priest, can’t you see? They’ll kill you all!”

“The god of the cities don’t have no power here,” the boy reminded her. “Remember? As for them-” and he nodded toward Damien and Hesseth, “-they’ll just be here till sacrifice.” His eyes glittered hungrily. “I expect old Bug-eyes’ll eat ’em for a snack, don’t you? Eat ’em up whole, and spit out the bones for us to play with. So don’t you worry.”

Sacrifice. Damien didn’t like the sound of that. How long till night fell? They needed Tarrant, badly.

It was Hesseth who kept her head together and thought to ask, “When is this sacrifice?”

The boy looked at her. If her strange ears and hands aroused any curiosity in him, it didn’t show. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “Whenever he says it’s time.”

He nodded back as he spoke, not the way that Damien and Hesseth had come, but down another path. One half of a circular clearing was visible, and in its center a statue. Black stone—obsidian?—crudely carved into a man’s shape. Only not a real man. The body was human enough, allowing for the crudity of the carving, and its arms were outstretched as any carved figure’s might be, but the face seemed . . . wrong, somehow. The eyes were too large, and they were not of a human cast. Strangely familiar, it seemed to him. He waited until the fog shifted, until enough light came through the mist to illuminate the features . . .

And then he remembered. That face. Those eyes. They had mocked him from over a woman’s shoulder, once. In the crystalline tower in the rakhlands, just minutes before Tarrant’s conjured quake had surged through those walls.

Faceted eyes, like a fly’s. Mirror-perfect. They seemed to turn toward him as the sunlight shifted, sparkling with amusement. But that was his imagination. Wasn’t it?

“Who is that?” he gasped. Barely managing to get out the words.

The boy grinned. “That’s our god, city-man. And you’ll meet him soon enough.”

He pushed some small packages through the bars, followed by a crude wooden cup. Food of some sort. The girl grabbed up one of the tiny bundles—half-cooked meat wrapped in a large green leaf, it looked like—and ran to her corner, where she tore into it like one starving. Her eyes never left Damien. After a time, Hesseth went over and got the two remaining packages, which she sniffed and then presented to Damien.

The priest didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on that statue, on the terrible visage that was all too familiar. The dusky air about it had taken on a gray cast, and the sky overhead—where he could see it—was tinted with the gold of the setting Core. The sun must be gone by now. Night had fallen. Where was Tarrant? Couldn’t he sense Damien’s need through the link that bound them? Didn’t he know to rush?

Calesta. That was the demon’s name, he recalled. Tarrant’s tormentor. Servant of the House of Storms. The one who had stood behind the shoulder of Damien’s captor in that terrible place, encouraging torture as the ultimate means of dominance. Even after all these months the memory made him shiver, and the name was enough to turn his blood to ice. They had known that he might be here, that he might be connected with the enemy they had come to fight . . . but this?

If they believe in him enough, they can make him a god. They can give him that kind of power.

Two dozen mad children, and a god who delighted in pain. No wonder the city-folk were afraid of them. No wonder they embraced the distancing power of legends, preferring to believe that the Terata were animals, or fae-wraiths, or perhaps even demons themselves . . . anything but human. Anything but this.

“Come quickly,” he whispered. As if Tarrant could hear him. “As soon as you can. We need you.”

24

The Hunter flew over the valley fifteen times—or was it sixteen?—and still he couldn’t find the others. He sifted through the earth-fae with meticulous care, but still could discover no trace of them. He even conjured up a wind to scour the valley clean of its omnipresent mist, but despite the increased visibility he still found nothing.

Which was patently impossible. If they had ridden on, if they were in hiding, even if they had died, there would have been some sign of their passing. Even an Obscuring would have left its mark, a faint echo of power that would be discernible in the currents. But there was nothing. Nothing! It was as if they had simply disappeared. Or . . . as if they had never existed.

Just like the other humans here, he thought grimly.

He came to a stop on a barren peak and exchanged his feathers for human flesh. The wind whipped his long tunic around his calves as he stared down into the valley, his fists clenched tightly in silent frustration. They had to be there, he thought. They had to be. And if he couldn’t locate them, there was only one explanation. Not a pleasant one, but he was prepared to deal with it.

He drew in a deep breath to brace himself for Working—the mountain air was cold, and left a film of ice in his lungs—and then he patterned the earth-fae into a Summoning. It would have no real power over the one he was calling, he understood that now. But he wanted something that was more than an invitation, something that communicated not only his desire for an audience but his power, his determination.

If he’s still in the east, he thought.

The demon came. It took him half an hour to arrive, but Tarrant was ready for that; he was prepared to wait another five days if he had to. Karril brought with him no decorative backdrop this time, no false panorama. Perhaps he sensed Tarrant’s mood. Perhaps he knew that Iezu illusion was the one thing that might push the Hunter over the edge, toward unfettered violence.

“So,” Tarrant said, when the familiar form had solidified. “You did stay in the east, as I thought.”

Karril looked about quickly: at the mountain, at the chill night sky, at the hills in the distance . . . but not down into the valley, Tarrant noted. Not that.

“What is it you want?” he asked quietly.

“Reverend Vryce and the rakh-woman have disappeared. I need your help to find them.”

Karril stared at him in astonishment. “You know I can’t get involved in this. Did you think just asking again—”

“Perhaps I should explain the circumstances.” His voice uncoiled like a serpent, slick and venemous. “Three nights ago there were humans there.” He pointed down into the valley, to where they had been two nights ago. “Now they’re gone. One night ago Hesseth and Reverend Vryce made camp beside that river. Now they’re gone.” Ice-cold eyes fixed on the demon, black with hate. “Not dead. Not deserted. Not even Obscured. Gone.”

“So what?” Despite the demon’s tone of bravado, there was nervousness in his eyes. He can sense the rage in me, Tarrant mused. He knows how close I am to directing it at him. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Find them.”

Karril was silent.

“Then tell me how to.”

The demon turned away from him. Afraid to meet his eyes? “I told you, I can’t ever—”

“Get involved? Don’t fool yourself, Karril; you are involved. This isn’t the work of some human sorcerer; I’d smell that a mile away. And it isn’t the work of a simple demon either, I know that.” He took a step closer to Karril, was pleased to see that the move made him nervous. In some ways the demon was remarkably human. “It must be illusion. What else? A veil of false reality, obscuring their movements. But there’s only one kind of creature on this planet that can create an illusion so perfect, so utterly undetectable. Isn’t there, Karril?”

“I know nothing about sorcery,” he whispered.

“But you can change the world’s appearance with a thought, can’t you? Create images of material objects so real that the human mind, accepting their existence, finds them utterly solid. You can even kill with such illusions—though I doubt you ever tried.” He paused. “All the Iezu have that power, don’t they? Isn’t that part of what defines your kind?”

Karril said nothing.

“Only the Iezu are capable of such artifice. Only one of that kind could cloak a valley so completely that no human sorcery could defy it—and leave not even a mark upon the currents, to testify to his interference. Only the Iezu, Karril.”

The demon said nothing.

“You hear me?”

“I hear you,” he whispered.

“I want answers, Karril. I want them now.”

“And if not?” the demon challenged. “What then? Will you Bind me? Disperse me? I told you, we can’t be controlled like that.”

“Ah, yes. That was an unpleasant surprise. But I’ve given the problem a lot of thought since you told me that . . . would you like to hear my conclusions?” He waited for a response; when there was none he continued. “All human Workings involve a mental formula. One has to define the Worker—oneself—and one’s subject, and the form which the earth-fae will take to link the two together. So I thought, what if some part of that formula were flawed? Not the linkage, obviously, but something less noticeable. Perhaps the supporting definitions. In short, might a Summoning fail—or a Binding, or a Dispersing—because my understanding of its recipient’s nature was flawed?” He wasn’t sure, but he thought that Karril was trembling. “I could correct that,” he said quietly. No need for volume; the threat was inherent in his tone. “I could focus all the power I needed by drawing on my negative emotions—my anger, my indignation, hate, fear, pain—and then direct it at someone I knew, without trying to define who or what he was. Such as you, Karril.” He gave that a few seconds to sink in. “What do you think? Would it work?”

“I don’t know.” The demon’s tone was miserable. “No one’s ever tried that.”

“Perhaps it’s overdue, then.”

He watched as Karril struggled with himself—with his conscience?—in silence. At last the demon muttered, “What is it you want?”

“I told you. The lifting of the veil that masks what’s in the valley. You don’t have to help me beyond that; just let me see the enemy’s work, and I’ll fight my own battles.”

The demon shut his eyes tightly. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Karril—”

“I can’t! It’s not my doing. I don’t have the power.”

“But it is a Iezu Working,” the Hunter persisted.

The words came slowly, squeezed out of him one by one. “Yes. That’s why I can’t get involved, don’t you see? We’re forbidden to fight one another.”

“By whom?” Tarrant demanded.

Karril turned away. Staring down into the valley, he whispered. “By the one who created us. Our progenitor.”

“Progenitor? Are you telling me that the Iezu were born!”

The demon nodded.

“That’s impossible. The very definition of a demon—”

“That’s how I understand it,” Karril said quickly. “It’s how we all understand it. So maybe we’re wrong. What difference does that make? If we believe ourselves to be a family—if we function as if we are—does it change anything to have you question our origin?” He turned back to Tarrant; his voice was shaking. “I’ll tell you another thing. The same force that gave birth to us can kill us, just as quickly. We all know that. And I’m no more anxious to die than you are. Consider this: do the Iezu, being born, have souls that will survive death, or do they simply dissipate into the currents like other demons do? I’m not anxious to find out, Hunter. And I will, if you force me to get involved in this. That’s the truth.”

For a moment there was no sound but the wind, slowly dying. Then the Hunter’s voice, as quiet as the night. “The valley has been cloaked by one of the Iezu.”

“Yes.”

“And you can’t dispel his Working.”

The demon shook his head.

“Then offer me an alternative, Karril. I’m desperate, and that means I won’t hesitate to kill you, if necessary. You know that. Tell me what you can do.”

The demon drew in a deep breath, trembling. It was a human gesture, not necessary for either life or speech. His flesh was only an illusion, after all. “I can talk to him. I can . . . plead. That’s all.”

“And what are the chances that will work?”

“Very slim,” he admitted. “But if the alternative is open conflict between us . . . we’d both die, then.”

“Good. I suggest you remind him of that.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

The gray eyes narrowed. “That would be unpleasant for both of us, wouldn’t it?”

“There’s an understatement,” the demon muttered.

“Just do that one thing for me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Do you think you can?” Karril asked sharply.

“What?”

“Destroy him. The one responsible for this. That’s what you intend, isn’t it?”

“Do you think I can’t?”

The demon sighed. “If any other man had asked me that question . . . then I would have said no. No human power could defeat him. But you, Hunter? If the years have taught me nothing else, it’s never to underestimate you. And none of your enemies have survived, have they? So who am I to judge the odds against you?”

The Hunter’s expression softened slightly, into something that might almost be called a smile. “You flatter me.”

“Hardly.” But the demon’s expression softened as well, as he bowed his leavetaking.

It would have been hard to define the exact moment at which Karril’s chosen flesh began to fade; one minute he seemed as solid as any natural human, and the next he seemed transparent, so that the distant stars shone through him. A perfect illusion, Tarrant mused. The greatest talent of the Iezu demons—and their most potent weapon.

Before the demon’s form completed its dissolution—when the ruddy flesh and opulent attire had not yet faded into the shadows of the night—Tarrant ventured, “Karril?”

The figure remained as it was, half flesh and half mist. The translucent eyes were curious.

“I’m . . . sorry. That it has to be this way.” The words came hard to him; regret was an uncomfortable emotion. “I wish there were an alternative.”

It seemed to him that Karril’s ghost-flesh smiled slightly.

“Yeah,” said the demon. “Same here.”

And as the last of his form dissolved into the night, he whispered, “Take care, old friend.”

25

The night passed slowly. Tarrant never came. Damien tried hard not to think about what might have happened to him, but images from the past refused to be put down. The Hunter in fire. The Hunter screaming. The Hunter’s flesh in his hands, so charred and tortured that the skin came off when he pulled, displaying smoking red meat . . .

It doesn’t have to be that way. He might not even have been captured. Maybe the strange sorcery of this place is keeping him away. Maybe any minute now he’ll learn to break through it.

Maybe.

Demonlings arrived with the night, wispy bits of malevolence that crowded about the bars of their prison like so many starving animals. He worked a simple Repelling to keep them out of the cave itself, but they hung about its border with unnerving persistency. Periodically he had to reinforce his work, and while he did so memories of the quakes of this region ran through his mind. Once there was a slight tremor just after he was done, and he shook for many long minutes afterward. How long could he keep it up before sheer chance defeated him?

Through it all the little girl watched him. She had squeezed back into the farthest corner of the cell, a water-carved alcove so tiny that Damien couldn’t have pried her out if he’d tried. That she was mortally afraid of the priest was obvious; it only took one accidental step in her direction for her to cry out, and try to wedge herself even farther back into the rock. And the accusations she cried out at him! Your God can’t have me. I won’t bleed for him. As if the One God would collect children. As if He would hurt them.

But then he remembered the children of the cities, chained up as bait for the faeborn. And the adepts, all the helpless adepts, murdered in their cribs for the crime of being able to See. And all the others there must have been as well, babies who couldn’t See but who seemed a little strange, the children of hysterical parents who were all too ready to sacrifice their own to keep humanity pure . . . yes. Whether or not this little girl had suffered at the Church’s hands, she had every right to fear men of his calling.

How terrible. How unthinkable, that the seeds of his faith had garnished such a dark harvest. If he thought about it too long he would surely weep, like he had for so many nights after they’d left Mercia. Secretly, of course. In silence. Such tears were a very private thing.

It’s not just the Church that’s gone wrong here. This whole land is wrong, from start to finish.

He took out the Fire. Gently, carefully, wary of breaking its container yet again. So little was left. Even in the darkness of the cave it hardly glowed at all, and the creatures who fluttered about the thick wooden grate merely paused to take note of it, then resumed their fluttering. He closed his hand about it, could barely feel its warmth. So much power gone, he mused. So much wasted. If only the faith of those thousands could have been focused where it was needed. Here. If only it could have been used for a Cleansing.

It was Hesseth’s soft hiss that alerted him. He glanced first at the gate, then toward the back of the cave. The girl. She had moved. Crouched forward on all fours, alert as a beleaguered animal, prepared to bolt back to her hole should danger threaten. She froze when he looked at her, but when he didn’t move—he made very sure he didn’t move—she inched forward. Slowly, one hand in front of the other, flexing her weight on her fingers like a stalking predator, her body low to the floor. Her eyes seemed twice as large as they caught the dim Firelight, and amber highlights played along lengths of black, matted hair.

He held himself utterly still as she approached, hardly daring to breathe. When she came within an arm’s length, she reached out to him, slender fingers oh so delicate in the darkness, short nails underscored by dirt. He could see the hunger in her now, sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes half-masked by dirt, the hollows at the base of her neck and the deep channels along her muscles that spoke of weeks of starvation, a body stressed almost beyond endurance. Then the thin fingers stretched out toward his hand, then hesitated; he could see her lower lip trembling.

Slowly, carefully, he opened the hand that held the Fire, until the crystal vial was cradled in his open palm. Only then did she reach out to it, tiny fingers struggling toward its light like a plant seeking the sun. Her index finger made contact then, and she gasped; it took all his self-control not to move toward her, away from her, not to do something. But he sensed that any movement on his part might shatter the fragile moment, might send her scuttling back to her muddy den to starve alone in silence once more.

“Damien-” Hesseth whispered, but he shushed her. The girl’s hand closed about the crystal vial. Tiny, and so very fragile; she couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen at the most, probably younger. He could feel the girl’s eyes on him, but he didn’t meet them; he sensed that whatever she might read in his expression would only drive her away.

And then she lifted the vial, and took it from him. Small hands clasped tightly about it, bright eyes fixed on its secrets. He thought she moaned softly, but couldn’t tell if it was from pleasure or pain. Or both. By his side Hesseth was crouched tensely, ready to move if the precious vial was threatened. But Damien wasn’t afraid. He knew the power that was in those few drops of moisture, and he was willing to bet that the girl could see it somehow. Or feel it. Or . . . something.

Then she knelt in the mud and clasped the vial to her, whispering something too low for Damien to hear. She clutched the Fire to her stomach and doubled over it, her whole body shaking. Sobbing in utter silence; weeping without a sound. His heart went out to her and he nearly moved forward, nearly took her in his arms—but how would she take that? Might it not undo whatever this fragile moment had accomplished? He sat back on his heels and waited, hurting inside. Wanting to help. Daring to do nothing.

And then the shaking ceased. Like an animal she curled up about the Fire, hiding it from sight. Her head, tucked beneath one arm, was invisible. Only her long hair trailed out from the compact bundle, matted black strands mixing with the mud until it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Exhaustion hung about her like a pall of smoke.

After many minutes, Damien dared to move. The girl didn’t stir.

“Asleep?” Hesseth whispered. As she, too, shifted position.

He dared a Working. There was a chance it would awaken her, but he tried to be very careful. He gathered up the earth-fae as though it were the most delicate silk, and bade it weave a picture for his eyes. A Knowing. But what he saw was half as much sound as vision, and a thousand more elements he couldn’t begin to define. A symphony of meaning that he had no way to interpret. No experience.

But one thing was clear and he voiced it. Softly. “She’s sleeping. Peacefully.”

There were songs on the hillside, glorious songs of sunlight and optimism and energy, the endless music of faith. She could see them arrayed along the gentle slope, warriors whose armor gleamed Core-golden in the light of noon, soldiers whose banners were strung with bits of glass so that as they moved their standards sparkled, and as the wind beat on the richly woven cloth there was the sound of bells, of sparkling water, a thousand glassy chimes that rang out the song of God’s One Faith across the Darklands. Young men, old men, women astride their horses, soldier-priests so young they were nearly children—all helmeted in silver and gold and pennanted in brilliant silks, lining up for battle. The very air about them rang with their faith, their sacrifice, their passion. The very daylight was a song of triumph.

She floated through their ranks like a fae-wraith, touching, seeing, hearing all. Shields that flashed like fire in the sunlight. Swords that sang of perseverance and hope. She touched one blade and could hear all the hymns that had gone into its making, the thousand and one voices that had lent it power. Years of chants, years of prayer, years of utter faith . . . she moved to where another soldier stood and gazed at the crystal flask in his hand. The liquid within glowed with a heat that she could feel on her face, and its music was a symphony of hope.

They were riding into death, she knew. All these brilliant soldiers, all these priceless weapons, were about to ride into a darkness so terrible that it would snuff out all their songs forever. She could feel their place in history taking shape about them, not a beginning of hope but an ending, the extinguishing of a time of untrammeled dreams in exchange for one of cynicism and despair. She wanted to cry out and warn them, but what good would her words do? They knew the odds. They knew that the Evil they had decided to fight might well prove more powerful than all their prayers and charms and spells combined . . . and. still they gathered. Thousands upon thousands of them, knees clasped tightly about their anxious steeds, hands closing restlessly about their sword-grips and their springbolt butts and their polished pistols. And the Fire. It glistened in a dozen crystal orbs, in a thousand crystal vials. So very beautiful that it hurt her to look upon it, so rich in hope that she cried out to hear its song. Faith. Pure faith. She could drink it in all her life and still hunger for it. She could drown herself in it and never have enough.

You’ll die! she cried out to them. Not wanting the music to end. You’ll all die, horribly! The Forest will eat you alive! What good is that to anyone? Go home while you still can!

And then it seemed to her that one of the soldier-priests turned to her. Eyes of liquid flame, brilliant as the Holy Fire, fixed upon the space she occupied. His shield and sword were molten gold, and his banner-glass tinkled in the wind. He was too bright to look upon, too beautiful for her to look away. His voice was like the wind.

Some things, he whispered, are worth dying for.

And then the music became sunlight became peace, blissful peace, and she felt the vision fading. Melting into warmth. The gentle warmth of a mother’s arms. The loving warmth of a father’s eyes.

For the first time in many long nights, Jenseny Kierstaad slept.

26

In the realm of black lava,

In the citadel of night,

In the throne room of the Undying Prince,

Calesta waited.

The form which appeared before him did so without fanfare, without flourish. He hissed softly as it solidified, a sound like fingernails scraping on slate. Recognition was instant.

“Karril.” The sharp black lips shaped sharp words, harsh to the ear and mind. “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”

When Karril’s eyes had fully manifested, he looked around, taking in the rich trappings of the throne room: gilded chairs, crystal lamps, a wall of black glass through which the whole realm might be glimpsed. “You seem to be doing well for yourself.”

Calesta bowed his head. “My patron is wealthy.”

“And powerful?”

“Of course.”

“No doubt you see to that.”

“We each have our own ways of bonding with humans.” The black mist that drifted about his glassy form coiled around his neck like serpents. “Why are you here? There’s no love lost between us.”

“No,” Karril agreed. “And never will be, I’m afraid.” He took a few steps toward Calesta, running his finger along the edge of a gilded chair. When he spoke again, there was an unaccustomed hardness in his voice. “You trespass, Calesta.”

The black figure snorted. “Hardly.”

“You trespass,” Karril repeated. “Nine centuries ago I bonded with a human, and now you interfere.”

Understanding glistened in Calesta’s faceted eyes. “Gerald Tarrant.”

Karril nodded.

“If that’s what you came about, you’re wasting your time. Tarrant’s mine. I swore it the day he destroyed my project in the rakhlands. Him and that oversized priest of his—”

“The priest is no concern of mine. The Hunter is.”

The black face smiled; obsidian teeth glinted in a lightless gash. “So sorry you had to come all this way, then, just to be disappointed. The matter isn’t open to debate.”

“I think it is,” Karril insisted. “I think it bears on the very rules we live by. Or would you like to have the matter arbitrated?”

The faceted eyes flashed angrily. “You wouldn’t dare,” he growled.

“Try me.”

“On what basis? Noninterference? This war began long before you got involved in it.”

“He’s been mine for nine centuries, Calesta. That predates any claim of yours and you know it. Remember the rule? No one of us may interfere where another has staked his claim.”

“Yours? He’s been yours?” The black figure laughed harshly. “Come off it, Karril! When did the Hunter ever submit to you?”

“I’ve fed on him—”

“I’ve fed on thousands—millions!—and it doesn’t make them mine. Not in the sense you mean. No, your precious Neocount values his independence too much to truly bond with you—or any of the Iezu—and because of that the rules don’t apply here. So sorry, brother. If that’s what you came for, you may as well leave now.”

“If I do,” Karril said calmly, “it will be to go straight to our maker.”

The obsidian body stiffened. “You wouldn’t dare. I have the right—”

“Shall we let her decide that?”

The black figure drew itself up; the sharp edges of its flesh glittered dangerously. “You little fool! Petty god of sweaty couplings, patron prince of masturbators . . . don’t you see what you’re interfering with? Can’t you see how many years I’ve put into this, how much planning is behind it? I’ll change this world, Karril. Not just its outward appearance; I’ll change its fundamental laws. I’ll alter the fae itself! In time the entire planet will resonate in harmony with my aspect. Isn’t that worth the death of a piddling sorcerer or two? Think of it! Our natures are so very similar, Karril; you can feed where I do. You often have. Think what it will be like when this whole planet exists only to indulge us—”

“You don’t have to call off your precious project,” Karril said icily. “You don’t even have to let Tarrant go free. Just lift the illusion from the Terata’s domain. That’s all I came to ask.”

“Why don’t you join me instead?” Calesta asked softly. “We’re so very alike, you and I. Together we could tame this human species, and reshape it to suit our will. Why won’t you do it?”

Karril shook his head. “You disgust me, you know that?”

“Your answer never changes, does it?”

“Did you really think it would? We were born to be symbiotes, not predators. And you’re pushing that line. What would our maker think?” When Calesta didn’t answer, he pressed, “Lift your illusion from the Terata camp so that Gerald Tarrant can see your creations for what they are. Or else I’ll go before our maker and let her decide the merit of my arguments.” A pause, threat-laden. “I’m willing to take that chance, Calesta. Are you?”

“You’re bluffing,” he accused.

“I’ve never been more serious.”

“She’d kill us both.”

“Very possibly.”

“You haven’t got the nerve to chance it!”

“Is that your final answer?”

Calesta was about to respond when a third voice broke in. “Go ahead, Calesta. Indulge him. It might prove amusing.”

The two demons turned. In the doorway stood a man, tall and blond and perhaps fifty years of age. Though he wore no coronet to proclaim his rank, it was obvious in the way he entered the chamber. This room had been designed to please him. The whole world existed to indulge him.

“Lift the illusion,” he urged. “What does it matter? We’ll have him in the end, all the same.” He came near to where Calesta stood—the demon’s chosen body was rigid with tension—and looked Karril over with eyes that missed nothing. “Friend of yours?”

“Hardly,” Calesta growled.

“So.” He chuckled. “The faeborn have their own wars. I thought infighting was against Iezu law.” When no one responded, he asked, “What’s this one’s name?”

Neither of them answered. There was power in the name of demons, which made their silence a defiant gesture. The prince’s expression darkened.

“As you wish.” He nodded toward Karril. “You came to speak for the undead sorcerer?”

“I came to ask Calesta to lift his illusion,” he said through gritted teeth. How could he threaten this man? How could he coerce him? The prince was human, and thus immune from the kind of threats one would use on a demon; as for human threats, he had already conquered death. What tool was left for manipulation? “So the sorcerer could fight his own battles.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” the Undying Prince assessed.

Calesta said nothing.

“I would like to see him confront the Terata,” the Prince mused. “It would be interesting to see if he makes it to my realm, and in what condition. In fact . . .” His piercing gaze wandered to Karril. Fixed there. “I’m thinking he might be put to a better use than a target for Iezu vengeance.”

Calesta hissed.

“Think. How many men are there of that caliber? Perhaps one a generation is born with that ability, and so many die, so many make fatal mistakes . . . Here is one who’s survived the centuries—the most challenging art of all—and crossed land and sea against all odds . . . and come here. Why waste that power? Why discard that unique intellect? Between us we could tame a planet.”

He turned to Calesta. “Lift the illusion.”

“But my Lord—”

“Lift it.”

The demon took a step backward; anger flashed in his mirror-bright eyes.

“I’m not one of your mindless puppets, Calesta. Remember that. And I’m not that woman in the rakhlands, whom you twisted over the decades. I know your power and I know your limits and I won’t hesitate to use that knowledge. Those are the terms of your service here. I’ve never seen fit to interfere in your hobbies before—not even when you took that woman from my lands, along with half an army—but this time there’s something I want, and I’ll damn well have it. Lift the illusion. Now. Let the Hunter see what kind of power he’s dealing with.”

The demon’s glassy form blazed in the lamplight. “You command this?” he demanded.

“I do.”

The tendrils of smoke agitated about him, forming a thick black cloud. “I’ll give him the eyes to see through it,” he hissed. “No more. The others will just have to suffer.”

“The others aren’t my concern.” The Prince turned to Karril. “Is that sufficient?”

Karril managed to nod.

“There’s a service you’ll do for me in exchange. Tarrant’s too far away for me to contact him directly against his will. You’ll take him a message. Ask him to receive it.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

The blue eyes glittered. “That’s his choice. But he might regret it later, I think. Mention that.”

“I won’t do anything that causes him to be hurt.”

The Prince chuckled softly. “Loyalty in a Iezu is so refreshing. Isn’t it, Calesta?” He waved expansively. “It’ll be no more than a message. You can view it yourself if you like. He won’t even have to open a channel to me to listen to it . . . although he might choose to do that, in time. Yes. I think that he will.”

He turned and left then, as silently as he had come. Not until he was gone—and safely out of hearing—did Karril whisper, “Strange game you’re playing here, Calesta.”

The black face cracked; the foggy tendrils twisted. It might have been a smile.

“Not strange at all,” Calesta assured him. “Merely complex. So stay out of my way, will you? Because as you said, the price of open conflict would be high.”

And his faceted eyes glittered as he added sweetly, “Brother.”

27

The one thing he wanted almost as much as freedom, Damien decided, was a bath.

Morning light illuminated all too clearly their current state. Hesseth was clean enough, having started the previous day in fresh clothes, and while rakhene fur had its own distinctive odor it lacked the foulness of stale human sweat. Damien had supplied the latter in abundance. It was hard enough trying to keep clean with only one set of clothes to his name—the rest having been lost a small eternity ago, back at the gap—but when the only available river was seeded with nasty carnivores, and then their juvenile captors decided that the only water necessary was a single cupful for the three of them to pass around . . . he wanted a bath. Badly. And he suspected that his cellmates wanted him to have one.

They were all covered in mud, of course. And God alone knew what else that mud contained. Thus far his only need for biological relief had been satisfied by urinating into a corner, but it occurred to him that if they stayed here much longer they’d be adding more solid substance to the mucky chamber as well. And what about the girl? He got the impression she had been here some time already. Did they let her out for a toilet break now and then, or had she grown adept at hiding her own waste beneath the muddy cover? His nose was so numbed by the reek of mold and rotted meat which seemed to hang about the Terata island that he could no longer sort through the foul odors surrounding him to analyze their source. Hesseth must be suffering quite a bit, though. Thank God his sense of smell was only human.

The girl. What was she? When he awakened in the gray light of dawn—surprised to find that he’d fallen asleep at all in this dismal place—he found the Fire by his side, set one end upright in the mud. Sometime during the night the girl had crept back to her tiny hole and curled up there like an animal, head tucked down by her knees. After a moment he took the vial up and put it back in its protective pouch. What had she been doing with it? Why the strange reaction? And come to think of it, how the hell had she known that he was a priest? Without his sword there was no obvious sign of his profession, and he hardly looked like a clergyman.

A priest of swamps, he thought, rubbing a coating of grime from his chin. Stubble raked his hand. Serving a god of mud.

Gently, very gently, he worked a Knowing. He didn’t know how sensitive she was—or even what form her sensitivity would take—but he did his best not to wake her. The currents were sluggish, but at last they responded. He felt Hesseth drawing near beside him as the pictures formed, ghostly tableaux that were nearly as confusing as the girl herself. Could the rakh-woman see his Knowing for what it was, or did she merely sense the flow of power? He had never thought to ask.

Images misted through the gray morning light, fading one into the other like fae-wraiths. Contrasting images that seemed to come from different worlds, even different realities. Warm scenes from a secure home. A garden of crystal leaves, shimmering in the moonlight. A coat drenched in blood. The darkness of a cavern. A young girl running. The face of a priest contorted in hatred, the downstab of a ritual sword . . . he felt her almost awaken as that image formed, and had to dim down his Knowing until sleep once more claimed her. Then: Religious images, drenched in blood. A mother’s smile. A predator’s grin. A woman so twisted by age and neglect that her joints had thickened like tumors, her eyes tearing blood and pus. Malformations. Unhealed wounds. And running, always running; that image surrounded all the others, flanking them, creating a fragile web of unity that bound them all together.

Terror. That’s what all those pictures were born of, he thought, as he let the Knowing fade. He had no way of guessing how many of the images were real, and how many were the result of terror feeding on itself. Imagination could do terrible things in a place like this, especially to a young mind. Especially to one so infinitely vulnerable as this.

He longed to go to her. He hungered to comfort her. It went against all his training—against his very nature—to see such suffering and not move to heal it. But the priest’s face that he had seen in his Knowing loomed large in his mind, radiating a hate that was almost palpable. Real or not, it was real to her, and that was all that mattered. Maybe that was the face she saw when she looked at him. Maybe it was what she had learned to expect from his kind.

He prayed for her quietly. And mourned within, that he could not conjure a balm for her soul half so easily as he could Heal her flesh. Was that not the ultimate irony of his calling?

Food. It was brought to them in small bundles, inexpertly cooked. He tasted his dubiously, then downed a small bit of it. Hesseth studied hers, then decided against it; perhaps its mildly sour smell warned her of contents that her rakhene stomach couldn’t assimilate. His own body had fought off food poisoning often enough that he thought he must have calluses on his stomach lining by now, but even so he ate little. Just enough to keep up his strength. Weakness could be as dangerous as food poisoning in a place like this.

The girl still wouldn’t come near them, but waited until they withdrew to the far corner of the cave before she would claim her share. Even then her movements were strained, and it was clear that she was prepared to bolt the instant that either of them moved. Neither of them did. To Damien’s surprise she didn’t return immediately to her tiny shelter, but sat where the food had been left for her and gulped it down quickly. Her eyes left them only once, and that was when she looked for the cup of water. She gulped from it thirstily, her gaunt throat trembling as the water went down. She hadn’t gotten her share from the night before, Damien recalled, which meant she was probably desperate for fluid. Oh, well. He and Hesseth could manage without for a day if they had to.

But to his surprise she stopped before the small portion was finished, and slowly lowered the bowl. It was clear that she was still thirsty, and that the movement took effort. She glanced down into the cup, as if making sure that there was enough left over, and then placed it in front of her. Pushing it toward them. Then she moved slowly back to her own corner of the cavern, her eyes never leaving Damien.

After a minute he crept forward and took up the bowl. He passed it to Hesseth first, then drank from it himself. The girl hadn’t left them much, but considering how hard it must have been for her to keep from drinking it all it was practically a feast.

“Thank you,” he said. Very gently. Willing his voice to be as soft as it could become. “Thank you very much.”

The girl stared at him, but said nothing.

“Do you have a name?”

Still no response.

“I’m Damien Kilcannon Vryce,” he told her. “This is Hesseth sa-Restrath. We came from the western continent, to explore this land. To see if anyone had settled here.”

For a moment there was no response. Then, in a voice no louder than a whisper, the girl said hoarsely, “Jenseny.”

“Jenseny.” He said the name slowly, let her hear how very gentle it sounded on his tongue. “Are you from here, Jenseny? From the valley?”

“You’re a priest,” she accused.

For a moment he said nothing. Then he nodded.

“A priest of the One God.”

“Yes,” he said. Trying to remove all possible threat from his voice.

Her wide eyes blinked; was that a tear on her lashes? “Priests kill,” she accused.

He drew in a deep breath. Remembering the contorted face in his Knowing, the vicious downstab of a Church sword as it sliced into . . . what? A child? Yes, that was the image. And here she was, only a child herself. No wonder she was afraid!

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that priests didn’t kill. Children had an uncanny ability to tell when you were lying, and he sensed that if he lost her trust now he’d lose her forever. So he said very gently, “Priests kill sometimes. But where I come from, they only kill the faeborn. So that people don’t have to be afraid all the time.”

He could see her trembling as she considered that. “Never children?” she breathed.

“No, Jenseny. Never. My people would rather die themselves than ever hurt a child.”

He saw her tremble then, and she bit her lower lip so hard that there was a bead of blood there when she spoke again. “They do it,” she whispered. “All the time.”

“Yeah.” He could hear the shame of it resonate in his own voice as he whispered, “I know.”

Her eyes moved from Damien at last, and fixed on Hesseth. “She isn’t human,” she accused.

“No,” Damien agreed, and Hesseth said quietly, “I’m rakh.”

She shivered then, and nearly withdrew to the safety of her bolthole. Damien thought it said much for her innate courage that in the end she stayed where she was.

“Rakh killed my father,” she said. Tears started to flow down her cheeks, etching ravines into the mud on her face. She simply drew her knees up and clasped them tightly to her. “They ate him,” she whispered feverishly. “They ate him and took his place.”

“Not all rakh are like that,” Damien told her. Willing utter calmness into his voice. Hoping that it would affect her.

But her head snapped up in rage. “Yes they are! They’re all the same! My father knew! My father was there! My father saw . . .”

And then it seemed to hit her all at once—the loss, the fear, the utter hopelessness of her plight—and she sobbed helplessly into her arms. “He was there,” she whispered hoarsely. “He said they were all the same. All monsters of the dark—”

Damien looked at Hesseth.

“It’s daylight now,” the rakh-woman offered.

But the girl was past all hearing. Her body wracked by sobs, she wept into the mud that coated her arms with a passion Damien ached to heal. But what good could he do, when she clearly feared him so? And when she perceived his traveling companion as one of the tribe that had “eaten” her father? Best now to keep his distance, lest he frighten her even more. Maybe later he could work on increasing the fragile contact between them. Maybe later he could earn her trust.

And maybe later, he thought, he could find out just where this strange girl’s father had been, and what it was that he saw.

Footsteps approaching. He heard them before he could identify their source; the mist had thickened so much that it was hard to see more than ten feet past the prison gate. The glassy black statue was lost in the distance, swallowed up by the gray veil of fog.

Would Tarrant come tonight? he wondered. Or was the Hunter gone for good? Much as he didn’t like the thought of that, it was certainly possible. At any rate they were on their own until nightfall, and that was hours away.

A delegation of eight diminutive warriors approached the makeshift prison. Damien noted that these were all somewhat older, as Terata standards went, and armed with long spears that would permit them to threaten Damien and Hesseth without getting within hand-to-hand combat distance. A bad sign, he decided; it meant they anticipated trouble.

The bolts that supported the heavy grate were pulled back, and then the two tallest boys removed the grate itself. They had painted their faces, Damien noted, in a parody of the masks they had worn off the island; another bad sign. The whole day was looking downright ominous.

“It’s time,” one of the painted warriors announced. A girl. A boy’s voice ordered, “Get out.”

Damien looked at Hesseth, and at the girl. At last, though he was less than happy about the order, he began to move. The minute he cleared the cavern entrance four spears were lowered and pressed against his chest; not only couldn’t he run away, but if he moved too quickly in any direction he would skewer himself in an instant.

His hands were tied behind his back once more, and a nooselike rope was slipped over his head to serve as a leash. When they had him thus trussed up, they signaled for Hesseth to come out, and she was subjected to similar preparations. Testing his bonds, Damien noted that they were tighter than the last time. Yet another bad omen.

Two of the adolescent warriors had to go in after Jenseny. Since Damien had seen her run to the grate to plead with them at one point, he was surprised to see the utter terror that suffused her face when the Terata actually approached her. Maybe it had been enough for her then that the grate had been there, protecting her from close contact. Maybe. More likely it was that she feared the Terata, but had feared Damien even more. Enough to send her running to the children who so clearly terrified her, who even now grabbed hold of her with bruising strength and dragged her, struggling, from the prison.

They were led like leashed animals along the muddy path, toward the clearing where Calesta’s statue stood. The noose about their necks would tighten at the slightest provocation, and once when Damien stumbled it nearly choked him. But the child who was leading him reached into the hemp collar and loosened it for him. He had to stand on tiptoe to do it—no, he should have had to stand on tiptoe, but in fact he didn’t. How odd. The touch of his fingers was cold, and . . . something odd. Something Damien couldn’t put a name to, but when the flesh made contact with his own he couldn’t help but shiver. For an instant the boy’s face seemed to fade, to be forming into something else . . . and then the moment was gone, and everything was as it should be.

Or as it seemed to be, Damien thought.

The clearing surrounding Calesta’s statue was already filled with children, and though Damien couldn’t count them he guessed there were at least three or four dozen. The Terata came in all ages and sizes, from lanky pre-teenagers to children so small that they could hardly walk. But no one older than that, he noted. No one who had gone through puberty. What happened to them when they aged?

Their leashes were tied to a squat tree that sat at one edge of the clearing. At first he thought that the children would leave them together, but that was too good to be true. A young girl scrambled up amidst the twisting branches and affixed their leashes to opposite ends of the tree; the rope was taut enough that if they tried to move they would probably hang themselves. Great. Jenseny was released nearby, and she darted for the cover of the great trunk behind them. Out of the corner of his eye Damien could see her huddled beneath a tangle of twisted branches, staring with wide eyes toward the clearing.

From where she sat she could see his hands, and Hesseth’s; would she betray them if they tried to free themselves? He didn’t think so. He began to flex his hands, testing the knots that bound him for strength. There was a little slack, and he struggled to get it around to where it would do him the most good. Hard to do all that without moving his body, but the noose about his neck gave him no choice. He just hoped the children wouldn’t notice.

But their minds were on other things now. They were heaping small items about the base of the statue. Food, spears, bits of shining metal . . . offerings, Damien decided. One child brought forth a handful of glittering gems and broken bits of jewelry and dropped it on the pile. Another offered up a torn silk shirt. He heard Hesseth gasp as several of their own possessions were added to the pile. Either these children had captured other travelers or they raided the villages themselves, he thought; there were too many valuable items here for any other explanation.

When the pile was at last complete, the children gathered around the statue. Some stood utterly silent, waiting. Others began to sway impatiently, fidgeting with the restlessness of youth. He could feel their expectation filling the clearing with volatile force, and he worked all the harder at getting himself free. Whatever happened here, he didn’t think he was going to like it.

At last one of the boys stepped forward, and the small crowd hushed. His face was fierce behind the war paint, and his skinny chest had been bared to the wind. He faced the statue and raised up his weapon—a bow—and then announced:

“My name is Piter. Five days ago I led a band down to the southern cities. We found a girl chained up by the Holies, and we set her free. We had to kill five men to do it. I want to thank you for helping us sneak up on them, because they were much bigger than we were and I don’t think we could have killed them without your help.” He reached out to the crowd, toward one small girl in particular. She was wearing a cotton shift, now torn and muddied, and her face was streaked with tears. “This is the girl,” he announced, as she made her way to the statue. “Her name is Bethie.” When she came up beside him, he indicated that she should lay her hands upon the statue. It was hard for her to reach, given the pile of stolen goods that surrounded it, but at last she did so. When he nodded that she could let go, she did so, and regained her balance.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“His name is Calesta.”

“Thank you, Calesta.”

The two of them returned to the circle. Another girl stepped out. She was tall and slender and carried a long spear, which she flourished as she spoke.

“My name is Merri. I went into the Protectorates, and found a baby being exposed. I know there were guards in those woods, but none of them saw me, and I took the baby. I want to thank you for your protection, and also for helping me find the baby. She can’t thank you yet, so I guess I have to do it for both of us.” She reached out and touched the black statue, slender fingers splayed across its icy flesh. It seemed to Damien that she trembled for an instant as contact was made, but he couldn’t be sure. He was too busy struggling with his bonds to concentrate on such tiny details.

Four other children followed. They, too, had tales to tell, but the endings were not nearly as triumphant. Two had discovered exposed infants too late to save them. One had gone to free a child chained by the Holies, but there were too many men guarding the girl for even a surprise attack; he had retreated. One brave girl had even ventured as far as the northern cities, but when the forest gave way to farmlands she had lost her nerve and come home again. All of them thanked Calesta for keeping them safe from their enemies. All of them touched the black statue as well, and it seemed to Damien that more than one of them flinched as they did so. What did they expect might happen?

Religious sacrifices. Adepts left to die. No wonder there’s power here. No wonder it’s so chaotic. A tribe of rejected children, dedicated to rescuing other children from the abuses of eastern society. It made sense in a way. But why did it seem so unwholesome? Why did some of the children seem so . . . well, so odd, as they approached the base of the great statue? Why was it that Damien couldn’t seem to focus on some of them?

He worked a loop of rope over one hand and paused to draw a deep breath. Once you had that much slack it was only a matter of time. He wanted to be free so badly he could taste it.

The children had begun to move now. All but one began to circle about the statue, beating their feet upon the earth. Some closed their eyes as they moved, lost in the rhythm of it. Some began to chant tunelessly, their voices rising and falling with the stamping of feet.

One boy faced the statue. He raised up his hands and addressed the black figure, one hand clasped about a crude stone ax. “You gave us safety,” he told it. His voice, though loud enough, barely carried over the noise that surrounded him. “We thank you with sacrifice. Tell us who you want. Tell us what to do.” Then he, too, joined the circling crowd. The children were moving faster and faster, gradually working themselves up to a frenzy. The chanting had become shouting, and children thrust at the air with their spears and knives.

Then one small child broke free of the ring and ran toward the statue. He was small enough that he had to scramble up on the offerings in order to reach the feet of the figure. Bits of gold and jewelry cascaded to the ground as he placed his hands on the statue’s feet. “My name’s Keven,” he told it. He kept his hands in place for perhaps a minute, then let go of the statue and slid back down to the ground. “Keven!” he screamed. He ran back to the others, repeating his name over and over again like some sacred mantra. It seemed to Damien that there was joy in his eyes, and something else also. Relief?

He turned his head to look at Jenseny. But she had turned away, hiding her eyes from the spectacle before them. He could see her shaking.

One more loop, now. The rope about his hands was loosening, almost enough that he could slip one hand out. Almost . . .

One by one the children did as Keven had done. Some approached the statue quietly and reverently; others shrieked and laughed and danced their way to its base, scattering the offerings in their utter abandon as they reached up to clasp the feet of the statue. The whole inner circle was littered with bits of food and pillaged treasure, and the air inside the fogbound clearing was stiflingly hot, and rang with the frenzied screams of the children as they danced in faster and faster circles.

And then, just as Damien managed to get his hands free, the children stopped. Not all at once, but in a wave, as if each took the cue from his neighbor. Within a minute the screaming circle was silent, and all eyes were fixed on the child in its center.

It was a girl. Screaming. She must have just had her hands on the statue, for even now they gripped the edge of its base. “No!” she screamed. “Not me! Not me!” A strange rippling seemed to course though her flesh, something Damien felt more than saw; her outline became fuzzy, difficult to focus upon. “Not me!” she begged, as she tumbled to a heap amidst the scattered offerings. “Please, no!”

She was beginning to change. It was hard to make out the details as she thrashed about in her terror, but Damien thought that her body was growing longer. Bending. The spine hunched up behind her shoulder blades, and twisted in its lower portion so that her hips were wildly canted. Her arms and legs grew longer and then thinned, the flesh drawing tight about her bones until she looked like a living skeleton. Her eyes had sunk deep into her skull, and the screaming mouth was no more than a gash in a creased-parchment face, her white skin mottled by brown spots that ranged from the size of freckles to the livid swell of a fertile tumor just beneath her jaw. Another tumor just beneath it had broken open, and dark fluid glistened in its surface.

And then the children moved. Yelling and screaming they fell upon her, their weapons raised. He could no longer hear her cries at all, nor see her, but as the weapons were thrust downward one after the other he could imagine her pain. Her terror. For a moment he was frozen, as the full horror of the situation struck him like a blow to the face; then, more desperate than ever, he slipped himself free of the restraining rope. Spear after spear was thrust down into that trembling, magicked flesh as he freed himself from the noose about his neck; he tried not to think about her, but it was impossible. What had Calesta done? Aged her? His brain felt numb as he ran to where Hesseth stood, and slipped the noose up over her head. Too much horror. Too many questions. He had to get them both free before the children turned on them. He had seen killing frenzies before, knew just how dangerous such a mob could be. Even children, he thought, as he worked loose the knots that bound her hands. No; especially children.

Then at last they were both free to move, and just in time. The tallest of the children had broken free of the group, and as he scanned his tribe his eyes fell upon the visitors. A shout brought several of the other children around, though most were far too involved with their grisly slaughter to acknowledge any stimulus outside their own circle. The gray fog drew in close, like a cocoon, as face after bloody face turned toward Damien and Hesseth. Spears were lowered; knives were flourished. For a split second Damien wondered if it might not be better to stay and fight than to run—which was their only other option as he saw it—but he never had time to make a decision. Even as the children began to move, a cold wind swept down on them. The mist itself seemed to darken over their heads, like a stormcloud about to deluge the earth with rain. Bloodthirsty children looked up from their kill, small eyes wide with fear, faces streaked with blood.

And then it came. Not a fae-wraith, though at first it seemed to be. Broad white wings beat back the mist, fanning it into fevered twisters about the border of the clearing. Diamondine claws reached for the statue’s shoulder, then shut closed about it; obsidian crumbled like ash at the contact. It was an immense creature, and though it wore a bird’s form it was clearly much more than a bird. Its white feathers smoked as it sat on the statue, their tips turning black and then crumbling to ash as it fanned the gray mist with its wings. At times Damien thought he could see the faint spark of golden flames between the snow-white layers.

And maybe that was what gave it away. Maybe it was the image of burning, so deeply rooted in his memory, that awakened him to who and what the great bird was.

“Tarrant,” he whispered. Gazing at him in awe. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of courage it must take for the Hunter to leave his shelter while the sun was still high in the sky. The mist might help, but it was only temporary; a few gusts of wind, from the right direction and the Neocount would be totally exposed.

As if in answer to his thoughts the great bird screeched out its challenge, and more of Calesta’s statue crumbled beneath his grip. Coldfire began to pour down the black surface, spurts of unflame that fell from its shoulders like tears. The children began to draw back, and Damien could just make out the form of their prey on the ground. A shapeless mass of flesh, now, with half a dozen spears embedded in it. The coldfire reached the corpse, sizzling as it consumed both flesh and blood. A few of the children started to move away. One of them turned to run. Damien himself took a step back, and saw that Hesseth moved with him. Whatever power Tarrant was conjuring here, it was nothing he wanted to mess with.

And then the silver-blue power shot out like a tongue of flame, licking at the face of one of the children. Whatever scream the girl might have voiced was frozen in her throat as she went down, and she died in eerie silence. The unflames licked at another, then another, and bodies began to fall about the circle. Some children screamed. Some turned to run. Damien wanted to turn his eyes and look away, but his conscience wouldn’t permit him to do it. You brought this man here, he told himself harshly. Forcing himself to watch. Never forget what he is. Never forget what he can and will do. As all about them children screamed, children ran, children tripped over piles of bodies and struggled for balance as the silver-blue flames licked out at them, consuming the very heat of their lives in an instant. All about lay the dead, the fallen, their lips a cold blue, their eyes frozen and empty.

Then the last of the living children had fled, and the circle was lifeless. With a vast stroke of its wings the great bird came down to land. No sooner had it touched down than the coldfire flared up and consumed it, but the power was far from pure; looking closely, Damien could see the sparkle of golden flames—true fire—polluting its substance. Damn. That must hurt. When the Hunter was human once more, he quickly drew a fold of his cloak over his head like a hood, but not before Damien caught a glimpse of what the filtered sunlight had done to him.

“You know where the horses are?” Tarrant demanded. Scanning the clearing as he approached them. Studying the dead.

It was Hesseth who answered him. “No.”

He was still for a moment, then he pointed. The finger that poked out from under the cloak was sun-reddened and peeling; it seemed to Damien that its condition worsened even as the motion was completed. “That way. Get them and then keep going, to the end of the island. I’ll meet you there.”

Then it seemed from his posture that his eyes fell on something behind them. Damien whirled about, only to find that the girl from their prison was still with them. Too frozen with fear to move, she was cowering behind the inadequate shelter of a tree trunk, her dark eyes wide with terror. Even without Working the fae Damien could sense her slipping under, giving way at last to a barrage of fear too terrible for a mere child to resist.

It was Hesseth who moved first, covering the ground between them even as Tarrant began to react. “No!” she cried. She pulled the child to her and wrapped her arms about her. “Not this one! Not like that.”

For a moment it seemed that the Hunter would move against her anyway, with or without Hesseth in the way. But at last he turned back to Damien, and in a hoarse voice whispered, “I haven’t the strength to argue now. Take the horses. Meet me where I said. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished things.”

He turned to go. Damien grabbed his arm through the cloak. “It’s finished. Let them go. They’re just children, Hunter. They won’t—”

“Children?” he snapped. “Is that what you think they are? You fool!” A hand shot free of the protective cloak and closed about the back of his neck; the Hunter’s skin was hot against his own. “Look at your precious children now. Share my vision and See!”

The power struck him like a hot iron, driving the breath from his body. For a moment he could see nothing but the hot sun, the blazing sun, whose killing light penetrated the fog and reflected from every surface. Then, element by element, he began to pick out details of the carnage. Bodies of children, wracked by coldfire. Only . . .

Only they weren’t really children.

He staggered toward the nearest clump of bodies, aware that Tarrant was moving with him. Heat lanced up through his arches as he walked on the sunlit ground, and it felt like his head was on fire. He knelt down by one of the bodies and stared at it in horror and amazement. What had seemed the body of a child was transformed through Tarrant’s vision into something twisted, something grotesque, a creature whom the years had tortured even while it played at childish games and believed itself to be truly young. The limbs were skeleton-thin, the torso so emaciated that ribs could be counted. Its joints were swollen with thick calcium deposits that must have made each movement a torment, and a yellow discoloration had begun to envelop one arm.

He staggered to another body, and another. Not all of them were as old as the first, but all stank of age and neglect. Cuts which had been left undressed had ulcerated, leaving one body a mass of open wounds. Cancer, untreated, had consumed a middle-aged woman. From one gashed leg he could smell the stink of gangrene, and another had broken his foot only to have it heal into a crooked, twisted mass.

Numbly he moved from body to body. Sorting through the carnage for understanding, for acceptance. A few of the fallen had been real children, but even those were in bad shape. Whatever Working had maintained the illusion that these poor creatures were children, it had also blinded them to their own infirmity. It had kept them drunk on the vitality of false youth even while age and infection ate away at their true bodies. Little wonder so few of them had survived to old age. Little wonder they had fallen upon their unlucky comrade with such savage glee. Once the concealing illusion had been stripped from her, she was a reminder to them of what they would themselves become. No wonder they feared and hated her. No wonder they killed.

Then the vision faded, and the ground was littered once more with the bodies of dead children. He lowered his head and shuddered, overcome by the awful power of what he had learned.

“We don’t want them following us,” the Hunter whispered hoarsely. His voice echoed with the pain of his exposure; how much longer could he go on like this? “You get the horses and see if you can find our supplies. I’ll see there’s no pursuit.”

“You’re going to kill them,” he whispered.

The Hunter said nothing.

“Some of them are real children, you know. And none of them understand what’s happening.”

“They’re all his,” The Hunter said sharply. Gesturing back toward the statue. “Do you want that behind us? Do you want to be hunted down again as soon as I turn my back?” He strode toward the wall of fog; it seemed to part at his approach. “I’m not arguing with you this time, priest. There’s a time and place for mercy. This isn’t it.”

He said it quietly but firmly. “Not the children, Gerald.”

For a moment the Hunter stared at him. Then, with a muttered curse, he strode into the wall of mist. The gray veil closed behind him, hiding him from their sight.

With effort, Damien rose to his feet. His body ached as though he had fought all night. He looked at Hesseth, at the small child huddled in her arms, and thought, At least we’ve saved one. What was her name, Jenseny? At least she was still a real child, he mused; Tarrant surely would have killed her otherwise.

So many deaths. So much destruction. What force was responsible for all this? He remembered the statue of Calesta and shivered. What was his motive?

“Come on,” he muttered. Trying not to think. Fighting not to feel. “Let’s find the goddamned horses.”

The horses were tired and edgy and not in the best of shape but they could walk, and right now that was all Damien cared about. Jenseny stared at the huge creatures in amazement as Hesseth and the priest gathered up what few stores they had left. Their food was untouched, as were their camping supplies, but many of the small items were missing. At least the weapons were still there, Damien thought. Thank God for that.

They led the horses to the edge of the island, where Tarrant was waiting. In silence he led them down the rocky slope, and out onto the water. Though he knew that what appeared to be part of the river was really a bridge, Damien had trouble getting the horses to brave the route a second time; in the end he had to blind the animals with strips of linen and force them to follow.

When they were across, Tarrant turned back toward the hidden bridge. His movements were stiff, Damien noted, and he sensed that the man was in no little pain. Thus far the thick mist had held, but if it thinned out even for a moment . . . he shuddered to think of it.

Then the Hunter reached out his hand, and the water exploded. Pieces of wood and ice went flying up and downstream, and a tree trunk which had been near the bridge shattered into a thousand glassy fragments. Splinters of frozen wood rained down upon the party like hail.

“That should do it,” Tarrant said shortly, and he turned back to lead the party into the woods. Damien felt something tight in his gut loosen up just a little bit. If the Neocount had taken time out to destroy the bridge, that meant that he hadn’t killed everyone on the island. The real children were still alive.

Later, when he managed to pull up beside Tarrant, he whispered softly, “Thank you.”

The Hunter didn’t answer. But Damien knew that he heard.

They walked their horses into the forest. After a day and night in the cramped prison, Damien and Hesseth both needed the exercise. As for the girl, she was hard-pressed to match their pace, and at last her strength gave out. Damien called for Tarrant to stop, and together he and Hesseth lifted Jenseny’s limp form up onto the mare’s back. He could feel Tarrant’s eyes boring into his back, his rage at indulging such a delay. Tough luck, he thought, as he strapped her firmly into the saddle. Deal with it. But when they were done and had begun to move again, he did take a minute to let Tarrant know that the girl might have information they needed. It was only half the reason she was with them, but it was the half that Tarrant would care about. No doubt he had used up his limited quota of human compassion when he spared the children’s lives.

When they moved into the depths of the forest, where foliage conspired with the mist to shield the party from sunlight, Tarrant seemed to relax somewhat. Soon after, when the last of the dim light began to fade, he pushed the makeshift hood back from his head. The skin of his face was raw and crusted, and Jenseny—who had caught only a glimpse of him before—stiffened in her saddle and gasped. But Damien and Hesseth’s reaction (or lack of one) seemed to calm her, and after a moment she was slumped in her seat once again, dozing as they went.

“You’ll be all right?” Damien asked. Not really doubting it.

The Hunter nodded; a bit of singed skin fell from his temple. “True night falls for half an hour tomorrow; if I’m not whole by then, that will heal me.”

He stopped and turned and regarded Jenseny. The tired girl was sound asleep. “Does she really have information?” he challenged. “Something useful?”

Damien hesitated. “She might. And she seems to have Vision of some kind.” She knew I was a priest. Who knows what else she Saw? He looked sharply at Tarrant. “Why? Did you think I said that just to save her?”

Tarrant’s lips tightened, loosening bits of burned skin. It was hard to say if his expression was a smile or a sneer.

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” the Hunter muttered.

They made their camp long after midnight. Damien could no longer remember how many miles they’d traveled, or how long they’d been moving. He remembered passing the thornbushes, Hesseth holding the girl tight against her while he drove back the branches with smoke, as he had seen the Terata do. They weren’t quite as efficient as the children had been, having had less practice, Tarrant’s horse was badly scratched going through. But it was almost a pleasure to Heal again, a kind of cleansing, and Damien took care to make sure he had cleaned the wound of poison before he used the forest’s earth-fae to knit it safely shut again.

Throughout it all the girl watched them. She was still wary of Damien, though her initial terror seemed to have subsided somewhat. Tarrant seemed to both fascinate and repel her. For his part the Hunter attempted to ignore her existence, and when he did look her way it was with great irritation, as if to say that his life had enough complications without a crazy child being dropped in the middle of it. Damien sensed that as soon as they were alone, or as soon as the girl was safely asleep, Tarrant was going to let him have it for bringing her.

But she could be useful, he thought to himself. She could have information. And behind that lay another thought, even more compelling. I just couldn’t leave her there.

By the time they made camp his whole body ached, and he thought that once he sat down he would surely never move again. For which reason he saw that the girl was down from her mount and working at unpacking the horses before he even tried it. They had lost a lot. Not the large items, the important ones, but all the hundred and one tiny items that he had packed against the day of their unexpected need. Oh, well. On a trip like this you prepared as best you could and then made do with the cards that fate dealt you. At least they had blankets and the crude tent which Hesseth had assembled. At least they had food.

When those were in place—and a fire had been started, and water gathered from the stream nearby to be heated over it, and the horses brushed down and hobbled for the night, and Jenseny huddled inside the tent for some much-needed sleep—he finally allowed himself to ease his weary flesh down to the ground and rest. Hardly a moment after he had done so, Tarrant sat down opposite him.

He met those eyes, so pale, so cold, without wondering what was in them. He knew.

The Hunter spoke first. “You don’t know who she is. You don’t know what she is. The danger of having her with us—”

“In this forest? What’s she going to do?” With a weary hand he wiped a crust of dirt from his forehead. He could taste the salt of sweat on his lips. “She’s a child, Hunter. A very tired, very frightened child. I want to get her out of this dismal place. When we get to the coastal cities, then we can talk about alternative plans.” He rubbed his hands one against the other; his fingernails were dirt-encrusted, his skin little better. “Not here. Not now. Not when I’m so tired I can barely think.”

“She’s not just a child and you know it. If she has Vision—of any kind—then she may have power. She knew you were a priest, Hesseth tells me. Don’t you realize what that implies?”

“I know. I know. But even if she were a full adept—”

“Not all adepts are sane,” Tarrant reminded him. “In fact, very few are. Even in a normal environment the pressures of such a life are almost beyond bearing, and here . . .” He shook his head. “And she is, as you say, a child. Unstable to start with, even more so under these circumstances. Who can say what goes on in the darker corridors of that brain, or how and when madness might manifest itself? You’re playing with fire here.”

“Then let’s just say I’m prepared to be burned.”

He could see the Hunter’s jawline tighten; reflected firelight burned in his eyes. “Maybe you are, Reverend Vryce. Brave and foolhardy man that you are. But I’m part of this expedition, too, and so is Mes Hesseth. And our mission here is far too important and dangerous for us to take chances like this—even to satisfy your nurturing instincts.” With a fluid motion he stood, and settled his cloak more comfortably about his shoulders. “Think about it.”

“You going somewhere?”

“I have business to attend to.”

“I’d have thought you killed enough for one night.”

The Hunter’s expression was frigid. “The currents will move in their course whether you choose to notice them or not. We’re far enough south that there’s a chance I can read them now, get some kind of bearing on the enemy. And I’d prefer not to Work too close to your guest, if that’s all right with you.”

Damien wondered just what it was about the tone of his voice that set him on edge. The words were certainly no more arrogant and condescending than Tarrant’s usual ripostes, but the tone was . . . odd. Too subtle in its difference for him to pinpoint, but the difference was definitely there. For some reason it was unnerving.

“Yeah,” he managed. “Sure. Go ahead.”

As the Hunter left the camp he thought: He’s hiding something.

In the darkness of the forest, in a small clearing sheltered over by trees so thick that even the moonlight, was dim, Gerald Tarrant stopped. He took a moment to gather himself, then whispered a Iezu name. As he had anticipated, no formal Summoning was necessary. Even as the last syllable left his lips the demon came to him, drawing its substance from the night.

“So,” Karril said. “You’ve decided?”

His mouth set tightly, the Hunter nodded.

The demon held out a hand to him. In his palm was cradled a tiny star, a bit of Worked light that glimmered and pulsed against his illusory flesh. “Kind of tasteless, given your preferences, but he said it was the best he could do without a physical ward to contain it. And I couldn’t have carried that back with me.”

“It’ll do,” the Hunter said shortly.

He held out his own hand to receive it. The tiny star moved from Karril’s palm to his own, shimmering brightly against the whiteness of his flesh.

“You want me to go?” the demon asked.

“I want you to stay.”

Slowly he closed his fingers over the thing. Power pulsed out from it, fanning out along the current. None of it went to the south, he noted, which was a good sign. Or at least a safe sign. He was still wary of a trap.

Slowly an image formed in the clearing before him. First the shape of a man imprinted itself upon the darkness: not quite as tall as Tarrant, not nearly as young. Then color spilled from its shoulders, became crimson robes. Silk, Tarrant noted, unadorned but finely woven. Jewelry glittered on age-weathered hands. A crown took shape above graying temples.

When the image was complete, it portrayed a man perhaps fifty years of age, light-skinned, mildly athletic. A man who had taken care of his flesh. The figure waited a moment before beginning to speak, perhaps to give Tarrant a moment in which to study it. Then it began.

“Greetings, Neocount of Merentha.” It bowed its head ever so slightly, a gesture of carefully measured respect. “My servant brings me word of your history and your exploits. May I say what a pleasure it is to have a man of your power come here.”

Tarrant said nothing, but his eyes betrayed his impatience.

“By now you are no doubt wondering whom and what you face. Permit me to enlighten you. My name is Iso Rashi, and I serve as Prince of this region. My parents came here some five hundred years ago as part of the Third Expedition. No doubt you know the fate of those ships. The warriors of the One God are fond of bragging of their exploits, but they aren’t quite so eloquent when it comes to their failures. Nearly one hundred men and women survived the slaughter of the Third Expedition, and made their way to the south. Their descendants are my subjects. Ours is a nation birthed in violence, and its currency is hate—for the cities of the north and for all they represent. I make no attempt to hide that fact, or to make apologies for it. We are what the followers of the One God have made us.”

“I reach out to you now because I believe that you and I are much the same, Gerald Tarrant. And because there are so few others capable of claiming that distinction. I perceive in your power echoes of my own; I sense in your determination and your ruthlessness the kind of drive that maintains this throne. And we have both conquered death. There is a very special distinction in that. Surely the scale of our lives is different than that of the common man. Surely our vision must be that much more ambitious.”

The figure paused; it reached out one hand toward Tarrant. “I’ve come to offer you an alliance. The undead allied to the undying. My demons have told me of your power; you’ve seen enough evidence of mine to judge it. Can you envision a more perfect match than this? Power allied to power, enough to shake a world.”

“What’s in it for me, you ask? The chance to spare my nation what could be a devastating attack, and avoid a conflict that might kill one or both of us. The spirit of Death has a marked distaste, for immortals, as you must surely know; I prefer not to tempt him. And for you, Neocount of Merentha? What price would be sufficient to turn you away from battle? What power could tempt you away from your isolation, after so many centuries?”

The figure smiled; the cold eyes gleamed. “I can make you a god.” it pronounced. “My people control the reins of faith in the north. I can put them at your disposal. You can conquer the north in an instant—a vengeful deity whose arrival makes the priesthood of the One quail in terror—or you can play a more subtle game. After a decade of careful propaganda, the Prophet could live again. Within two decades, he could be deified. Within a century . . .” He gestured broadly. “But I hardly have to describe to you what the power of the popular imagination can accomplish. Think about it, Neocount. The power of a god. The options of a deity. What will the patrons of Hell think of you then, when you raise yourself up out of their clutches forever?”

The figure paused; its arms fell back down to its sides. “That is the substance of my offer, Gerald Tarrant. A true alliance between self-declared immortals, as befits their power and purpose. My mission demands that I subjugate the north, but it doesn’t demand that I destroy it. There’s enough wealth in this region for two men like us, and I propose that we share it. As for any demons who might come between us, perhaps the Iezu . . . the faeborn were created to be servants of man, and not his master. Servants are replaceable. Yours and mine.” He smiled coldly. “I think you understand me.”

“Think about it, Neocount. Think about it carefully. I await your reply.”

Its message completed, the figure faded slowly into night. The last thing to fade was the glitter of its crown.

Tarrant opened his hand. His palm was empty.

The night was very quiet.

“Will you answer him?” Karril dared.

“Yes.” He shaped the words carefully, deliberately. It was clear he was deep in thought. “I’ll answer him.”

His eyes were unfocused, fixed on landscapes and possibilities that were visible only to the mind. Wisps of intentions sparked to life about him, only to be swallowed up once more by the darkness of the Hunter’s soul.

“When I’ve decided,” he said quietly.

28

Jenseny awakened in a strange place.

For a moment she just lay huddled in the darkness, unable to remember where she was, or even what day it was. Then, slowly, it all came back to her. She felt strangely numb, as if she had been afraid for so long that something inside her had finally snapped and she just couldn’t be afraid any more. Or maybe, instead, she felt safe. Maybe this was what safety felt like in the Outside.

Slowly, as if her newfound sense of security was something that might be dispelled by movement, she raised herself up on one elbow and looked around. She was in a dark space whose irregular walls were made up of woolen blankets, crudely stitched together; some kind of makeshift shelter. There were a few holes through which sunlight shone, and a triangular opening in the far wall that was propped open with a stick. In the far corner there was a pile of supplies, too much in shadow for her to make out details. Opposite where she lay was another pile of blankets, with the rakh-woman curled up warmly inside them, sleeping.

Silently, with the care of a frightened animal, she crept from her own bedding. Even in sleep the rakh-woman’s presence was reassuring, and she wished she were awake so that she might crawl closer to her and curl up by her side. That she had feared her once seemed so distant now, so unreal, that it might have been in another life for all it affected her. Because in that moment when Hesseth had pulled Jenseny away from the white-feathered sorcerer she had blazed with such protectiveness, such searing maternal ferocity, that Jenseny could no longer think of her as one of the southern rakh. She had become something different, a species all her own, so replete with warmth and protective strength that Jenseny ached to hold her again, to drink it in anew. When the rakh-woman held her she felt safe again, like she could nuzzle herself into that warm fur and just forget that the rest of the world existed, because the rakh-woman would take care of her. No matter what.

When she was very quiet and very still she could hear the voices in that golden fur, the songs of a life lived far away from mistborn jungles and human sorcery. Sometimes if she was very, very still and the Light came on strong enough, she could see a camp filled with rakh like this one, with tinkling ornaments and painted tents and golden-furred children who ran from tent to tent, squealing with delight as they tumbled and raced like kittens. She liked the rakh children. She was sorry when the Light faded, taking that vision with it. Doubly sorry, because when they were gone she felt so lonely. Her father had been good to her, and the few servants who’d cared for her had been gentle and kind, but what was it like to run with other children? What was it like to laugh and yell with no care for who might hear you, safe in the knowledge that you belonged in your world, that nobody was going to show up suddenly and take you from the ones you loved because you had screamed too loud, or because someone had seen you running . . . It hurt, watching those children. It hurt to want what they had so very much, and to know she could never have it.

But at least she was away from the Terata. And the rakh-woman was here. And the strange priest also. She didn’t yet know if she should be afraid of him or not. Her father had said that all priests were the enemy, and that if any of the One God’s servants ever found out about her they would take her away and kill her, and probably kill him also for having protected her. But this priest couldn’t be like that, could he? When he’d told her that his kind would rather die than hurt children, it had seemed to her that he really believed that, and even though the Light was pretty strong then, she could hear no false note in his voice to warn her that he was lying. What an incredible thought that was! That a servant of Erna’s most vicious god could be so very gentle. Maybe it wasn’t really the same god that he worshiped. Maybe his people called it by the same name, but it was a different god altogether. Yes. That would make sense.

Slowly she crawled to the flap of the tent, where a crooked stick held the wool covering to one side. Warily she peeked out. The mist outside was thin and sunlight had trickled down to the forest floor, its noise muted to a dull clatter. She looked around for danger, but couldn’t seem to find any. There was a low fire burning some ten feet from the tent, its glowing embers surrounded by a circle of stones. A cookpot hung from a tripod arranged over the flames, and whatever was in it smelled good. Hunger stirred in her belly, and she wondered whether she dared take some of the food. Surely it would be all right. The priest and the rakh-woman would hardly rescue her and then not feed her, right? Especially since she was so very hungry.

She had just started toward the cookpot—timidly, like a skerrel braving open ground—when a footfall behind her set her heart pounding so hard against her rib cage that she could hardly breathe. She jumped up and was about to fun when a kindly voice said, “Easy, girl! The camp’s warded tight, and Tarrant says there’s nothing within miles to hurt you.”

She whirled around to find the priest behind her. He was half naked and dripping wet, and over one arm he carried a load of soaking wet cloth. “Give the stew a few minutes to cool so you don’t burn yourself. Here.” He came over to the fire and lifted up the pot by its hook, setting it aside on the stones to cool. She carefully kept her distance. “There’s a stream if you want to get clean,” he told her, nodding back the way he had come. He began to take the pieces of wet cloth from his arm and hang them on the tree branches surrounding the camp, so that the wind would dry them. One was a shirt, she saw, and an undershirt, a jacket, leggings . . . she watched while he laid out all his garments of the day before, except the woolen breeches that he was wearing. He kept those on for me, she realized. So that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. The thought quieted alarm bells that had been ringing in her head, and she relaxed a tiny bit. The priest must have seen it, for he grinned.

“Feeling better, are you?” He knelt by where the cookpot was and picked up a tin cup that was lying beside it. With a wooden spoon he began to ladle the hot stew into it. “I thought a good night’s sleep might do it for you. Here, try this.”

He handed her the cup. Her first instinct was to try to avoid coming in contact with him, but then she bit her lip and just reached out and tried not to worry about it. Her hand brushed against his as she took the warm metal cup from his grasp . . . and it was all right. He felt just as gentle as he sounded. She relaxed just a tiny bit more, and studied him as she blew on the hot stew to cool it.

He was a big man. Not merely tall, the way her father had been, but thick and solid. His face and arms were a leathery brown, but where his body had been protected by clothing it was a lighter shade, not unlike her own. Wet hair curled on his chest and arms, but not enough to obscure the half-dozen sizable scars that marked his barrel-like torso, or the multitudes more that had healed enough to become no more than faint ridges along his flesh. There was one particularly bad gash along his left arm, a ridge of angry pink that ran from his elbow halfway down to his wrist. He saw her looking at it and smiled. “That’s from the last expedition. Skin takes a long time to get its natural color back, you know.” There were parallel ridges along his rib cage on one side—claw marks?—and a welter of stripes across his back that she couldn’t begin to interpret. She was almost grateful that the Light wasn’t strong just then, because then she would have seen even more, and there would have been too much to make any sense of it. Best to take these things slowly, she thought.

He handed her a wooden spoon and she scooped up some of the cooling stew. The scent of cooking vegetables and some aromatic meat tingled her nose. “Hesseth went hunting,” he explained as she tasted it. Hot. Very hot. But, oh, it was so good . . .The heat and the smell of it blossomed within her as she ate; she felt more alive than she had since leaving home.

He rubbed his jaw as he sat down opposite her, somewhat self-consciously. “I guess they gave my razor to Calesta. Hope the bastard cuts himself with it.”

She shivered at the sound of the demon’s name. He was scooping some stew up for himself, and didn’t notice. Or so she thought.

“You all right?” he asked softly.

She managed to nod.

“Were you there very long? With the Terata, I mean.”

His voice was so very gentle. Like the rakh-woman’s touch. Hard and strong but infinitely tender.

“Three days. I think. I’m not sure.” Again she shivered, remembering. Following them through the forest. Trying to run when she realized what they really were. Driven forward at spearpoint . . .

“Easy,” he murmured. “That’s over now, Jenseny. You don’t have to go back there, ever.”

“I was so scared,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Truth to tell, so were we.” He spooned up some of the stew and tasted it. “Even Tarrant, I think. Though he puts on a damned good show.”

Tarrant. That was the third one in their group, the pale-skinned sorcerer. He didn’t like her at all. His gaze was like ice, and when he looked at her she could feel her very blood freeze up. But he was also fascinating, in the way that dead things could be both terrible and fascinating. She remembered an animal she had found in the forest, the first day after she had left her father’s keep. It was a small thing, golden and furry, and it must have been killed in a territorial fight because although its neck was torn up it hadn’t been eaten, just left there for the scavengers to find. When she had come across it, the body was still warm, and the blood-spattered eyes were closed as if in sleep. She remembered putting her hand on it, driven by a terrible fascination, feeling its warmth like the heat of a living thing. For long moments she knelt there, her hand on its tiny body, waiting. For a heartbeat, maybe. An intake of breath. Anything. It seemed incredible that anything which felt so alive could be so utterly dead. So perfectly silent.

Tarrant was like that, she thought.

The priest had gotten himself a portion of the stew as well—his own tin cup was battered and bent, and had clearly seen better days—and he ate in easy silence, glancing at her occasionally but never looking at her for so long that she felt uncomfortable. She found that she was able to relax a little, for the first time since leaving home. This man wasn’t going to hurt her, and certainly the rakh-woman wouldn’t. Tarrant, now . . . that was another story. But Tarrant wasn’t here. She drank in the sunlight and the safety and the warm fullness of her meal with a grateful heart, while the knots in her soul slowly began to untangle.

The next time the priest looked at her—kind, his eyes were so kind, it was hard to imagine a man like that killing anything—she nodded toward the tent. “Doesn’t she want breakfast, too?”

The priest smiled, and took a deep drink from a cup by the fire. “It’s her sleep time now.”

“Don’t you sleep at the same time?”

“Not while we’re traveling. This way one of us is always awake, in case there’s trouble. She’ll have her turn later.”

“Why don’t you sleep at night?” she asked. Night was only a vague concept to her—in her rooms at home lamps might be lit at any hour, and all night meant was that her father was more likely to come—but now she had seen the sunlight and the twilight and midnight’s darkness, and was struggling to sort them out into some kind of order. “Don’t most people do that?”

The priest hesitated. Only for an instant—but she heard it in the music of his voice, a faint sour note amidst the comforting glissando. “Most people do. Certainly it’s easier that way. But Tarrant . . . the sunlight hurts him. So we move at night.”

Something inside her knotted up again, something cold and afraid. For a moment she couldn’t speak.

“Jenseny?”

“They were like that,” she whispered. “The rakh. They could come out in the sun if they had to, but it burned them. That’s what my father said.”

For a moment there was silence. She was afraid to look at him. Afraid to listen.

“You don’t have to be afraid of Tarrant,” he said at last. “He’s a violent man, and he does a lot of bad things, but he won’t hurt you.” His tone was gentle but firm, not unlike her father’s. She lowered her head, feeling tears start up in her eyes. The priest’s tone awakened so many memories . . . she tried not to see her father’s face, tried not to hear his voice. It hurt too much.

“Jenseny?”

“I’m okay,” she whispered. Wanting to be brave for him.

“We came here because of those rakh,” he told her. “To stop the killing.”

“They ate him,” she whispered. Choking on tears. “They ate him, and took his place . . .” Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she fought not to cry. She tried not to remember. But there was enough Light in the camp that the visions came unbidden, and with them a sense of loss so terrible that she could hardly choke out the words. “I can’t go home . . .”

He didn’t come over to her then, but he did something. Because the vision slowly faded, and with it the hurt. It wouldn’t have faded on its own, she knew that. How had he made it stop?

“Jenseny.” His tone was gentle. “We came here to stop that from happening. We can’t help your father now, but we can stop them from hurting others. That’s why we’re here.”

A new fear took root in her, which had never been there before. Would they do that to others? Would all the Protectors die like that—eaten by monsters and then replaced—and would all their children have to cry away the nights, pretending that they didn’t know? It was almost too terrible to think about.

“We need your help,” he said. Very softly. “We need to know what your father told you about the rakh. We need to know what he saw. Jenseny . . . it’ll help us fight them.” When she didn’t answer—couldn’t answer—he whispered, “Please.”

What if they ate not only the Protectors, but their families and children as well? What if they went into the villages along the coast and ate the people there, too? She could almost hear the screams as those people died, mothers and fathers and children, top, children just like her, eaten up by things that looked like people but that weren’t really people. Rakh-things from the Black Lands, eating their way through the One God’s country.

“Jenseny.” He had come to her side so that he might take her in his arms. His skin was cool and damp, but his arms were strong, and she shook violently as he held her. “It’s all right,” he murmured, stroking her hair gently. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m sorry I asked.”

She wanted to help them so much. That was the part that hurt worst of all. She wanted to help them more than anything, but she was afraid to. What would they think when they found out that her father was responsible for all this? What would they think if she told them that the Protector Kierstaad, whose job it was to keep the rakh-things out, had opened wide his gates and welcomed them in? Would they understand? Would they let her explain why he had done it? Or would they hate her, too, for having been a part of it?

She couldn’t risk that. Not now. Not when these people were all she had.

“I can’t,” she choked out. Hoping he would understand. Not knowing how he possibly could. Choking on guilt because she knew she could help them, and yet . . . if these people came to hate her then she would have no one. No one at all. And she didn’t want to be like that again, not ever.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Hot tears dripping down her face. “I’m so sorry . . .”

And he held her while she wept. Just like her father would have done. Just like her mother used to do. He held her in this strange place, with dangers all about them, and whispered words of hope and safety. And even more important words, in response to her apology.

“It’s all right,” he whispered to her. Stroking her hair. Soothing her fears. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s okay.”

“I can’t . . .”

“Shh. It’s all right.”

And he held her, just held her, while she wept away her sorrow. While the sunlight—the beautiful sunlight—washed away all signs of mourning, and left at last only peace.

“Our enemy is Iezu,” Gerald Tarrant pronounced.

The mist had grown thicker with nightfall, blocking out what little Corelight still shone down into the valley. The air was damp and heavy, and at moments the mist felt more like rain than fog. They had left the tent pitched because of the wetness, and Jenseny was tucked away inside it, presumably sleeping. God knows she needed it.

Jenseny Kierstaad, Damien thought. Remembering that family name from their maps. Guessing at the horrors which her young eyes had seen, in the Protectorate where rakhene invaders had tortured dozens of people to death. No wonder she wasn’t up to talking about it yet. God alone knew if she ever would be. It was miracle enough that she was still alive, and as sane as she was.

“Which means what?” Hesseth asked.

“Trouble.” There was something doubly dark in Tarrant’s tone tonight, Damien thought, as if the news he had brought was disturbing on a personal level as well. He seemed . . . well, edgy. Which wasn’t like him. Another thing to worry about? “The Iezu have never been enemies of man, but that may be changing. And if it does . . .”

“Assst!” the rakh-woman hissed in exasperation. “Some of us haven’t spent a lifetime obsessed with human demonology, you know.”

“And some of us haven’t been as obsessed as others,” Damien added. “Who and what are the Iezu?”

For a moment the Hunter was still. The dying fire reflected gold sparks in his hair and eyes as he studied them both. At last, ever so slightly, he inclined his head.

“All right. I’ll explain what I know—but I warn you, it isn’t much. The Iezu have been around a long time, and most sorcerers have interacted with them, but they’ve always been obscure about their origins. Nevertheless—for the sake of the unschooled—I’ll do my best.”

“The Iezu are a sub-group of demons. That is—by modern definition—faeborn constructs with enough intelligence and sophistication to communicate on a human level. Like all true demons they feed on man, and manifest solid flesh only when they require it, but there the similarity ends.”

“All demons feed on man in one way or another, and most prefer the role of predator to that of parasite. Even the low-order types who feed on renewable resources, such as semen or blood, prefer to suck their victims dry. Very few have the desire—or the self-discipline—to spare their victims’ lives. And they give nothing in return for what they take, except for those fleeting illusions which might be required to seduce a man or woman into their clutches.”

“The Iezu aren’t like that. They rarely kill. As for how they came into being . . . no one really knows. Those few Iezu who speak of such things refer to a Maker, or Creator, who chose to bring their kind into the world. One of them even claims to have been born, rather than manifested.” He paused for a moment, as if reflecting upon that concept. “How curious,” he murmured. “And how ominous, for what it implies about this world.”

“Most of the Iezu never take on human form. Most of them never appear to humans in any shape at all, or interact with them except in the course of feeding. It’s doubtful if their victims are even aware of their existence. But a few, skilled in the arts of illusion, create bodies and voices and mannerisms with which to communicate, and seem to delight in human-style intercourse. The first of these appeared in the early fourth century, and more followed soon after. In my library back home I have files on nearly three dozen, and that’s by no means a final figure. None have ever died that we know of.”

“If I assumed that you knew of them—” and here he was speaking to Damien, “—it was because so many sorcerers do. The lady Ciani consulted several, and when an enemy’s attack robbed her of her facilities it was a Iezu who tried to help her.”

“Karril,” Damien recalled. “I think that was the name.”

Tarrant nodded. “Perhaps the very first of his kind; certainly one of the oldest. Karril is worshiped as a god in some regions, as many of the Iezu are; their nature makes them particularly compatible with that role. And he seems to enjoy interaction with adepts, which not all of them do. I, too, have relied on him for information. Sometimes even for guidance.”

“You would trust a demon?”

“The Iezu aren’t common demons, Reverend Vryce. Many pride themselves on their interaction with man. And even when they feed, they don’t take anything from man that can’t be replenished. Their hunger is for emotional energy, and they seem to be able to feed off that without weakening their prey. In fact, the bond between Iezu and human can even intensify the emotional experience for both.”

“Karril was worshiped as a god of pleasure, wasn’t he?”

Tarrant nodded. “And the men and women who couple in his temples not only feed him with their passion, but draw on him for intensification of their pleasure. It’s a true symbiosis between man and the faeborn—or as close to one as Erna is capable of providing.”

“So what’s the catch?” the priest demanded. “There has to be one, or the whole damn planet would have set up Iezu shrines.”

“A lot of them have, Reverend Vryce. Of the ninety-six pagan churches in Jaggonath, more than forty are dedicated to Iezu. Not that they know it, of course. The lady Ciani was trying to catalog them when events . . . distracted her.”

“As for the ‘catch,’ it’s both simple and deadly. Obsession. Addiction. Dependency. And not all of the Iezu hunger after pleasant emotions. Some lust after varieties of pain, and bond themselves to men and women who delight in self-torture; others have needs so complex or abstract that their victims expend all their vital energy trying to define just what it is they hunger for. Obsession can kill, remember that, and even when it doesn’t, it always deforms its victims. That’s the price of a true Iezu bond, for those who choose to embrace it.”

“So why would a sorcerer chance it?” Damien asked. “Surely they understand the risk.”

“Some think they can handle it. Some see it as a challenge. Most—like myself—perceive in the Iezu a valuable tool. Those who are willing to appear in human form—perhaps a tenth of their total number—are eloquent, sophisticated, and often amiable in nature. They have considerable knowledge about demonkind in general, and can tap sources of information that humans have no access to. And they recognize their own dependence upon humankind. That’s what really sets them apart from common demons: they may feed on man, they may delight in seducing him into symbiotic bondage, but in the end they do recognize that it is they who will be the losers if humankind fails to thrive.”

“So what does it mean that our enemy is Iezu?” Hesseth demanded. “To us, and to this mission?”

“You’ve seen it for yourself,” he said quietly. “The one power that all the Iezu have. The skill that defines their kind.”

It took Damien a minute to realize what he meant. “Illusion.”

The Hunter nodded.

“You mean those children-” Hesseth began.

“Illusion. That’s all it was. That’s all it had to be. The Iezu have no other power than that. But isn’t that enough?” he demanded. “A Iezu cloaked the valley so thoroughly that all my sorcery couldn’t see through his work. The children rotted to pieces even as they worshiped their Iezu patron, unable to see the truth of their own flesh.”

“You saw through it,” Hesseth challenged.

He turned to look at her. “I bargained with a Iezu for that right,” he said quietly. “Which may not work again. We would do well not to count on it.”

“Still,” said Damien, “If they have no power beyond that—”

“Don’t underestimate the danger of illusion,” Tarrant warned. “Remember the power of human belief. In the rakhlands I was captured by an enemy who wielded sunlight against me. Was that real or illusory? In that moment I believed it, and so it burned me. It could have killed me. We’re not talking about some parlor conjuration, which you can Banish with a little concentration, but a total warping of natural perception, manipulated by an enemy who knows its power. And you can bet he’ll use it carefully, in circumstances where we aren’t prepared to resist. It was surprise as much as anything which defeated me in the rakhlands.”

“So is it this Calesta who’s one of them?” Hesseth asked. “Is he your Iezu demon?”

The Hunter’s expression darkened. “Most likely. And we can expect him to be allied to some powerful human, as he was in the rakhlands. That’s not uncommon with demons in general, but it’s standard operating procedure for the Iezu.” Something dark seemed to flicker in the back of his eyes then, something cold and uncertain. Whatever it was, he didn’t choose to share it. “It will make our campaign more difficult,” he said quietly, “and far more dangerous.”

“You sound afraid,” Damien challenged him.

The Hunter hesitated. “Maybe I am. Maybe we all should be. If you told me that I would have to face a horde of demons unarmed, with nothing but my Workings to support me, I would be reasonably confident that my power was up to the challenge. But the Iezu? No man has ever killed one. I wonder now if any man has ever controlled one. Many of the laws of demonkind seem to be suspended in that family, which means that the techniques mankind has developed for dealing with such threats may well be inoperative here. Isn’t that reason enough to fear?”

“What about the atrocities we’ve seen?” Hesseth asked him. “Do you think this Calesta’s responsible?”

Tarrant seemed to hesitate. “Without knowing exactly what emotion he feeds upon, I couldn’t answer that. But my instinct says no. Not him alone. When a Iezu feeds, there’s usually a clear pattern. An emotional theme, if you will. I don’t see that here.”

“What about pain?” Hesseth demanded. “What if he fed on human suffering? Wouldn’t that explain a lot of what we’ve seen?”

“Pain may indeed be part of it,” he agreed. “But it isn’t enough. The inhabitants of the Proctectorates were suffering, but what about those in the northern cities? Except for a few frightened children, those regions were remarkably peaceful. No, if a Iezu were responsible, his mark would be visible there also.”

“What about degradation?” Damien offered. “You mentioned that as a pattern.”

“Yes—but rakh were also affected. The Iezu can’t feed on the rakh—or any other native species—so why waste effort corrupting them? No, it has to be something else. Possibly something that reflects Calesta’s human alliance.”

“You know for a fact that he’s allied with someone?”

A strange, dark emotion flickered in the depths of the Hunter’s eyes. “I think it’s likely,” he said quietly. “And why not? He served a human master in the rakhlands; why not do the same here? In time such a human would have no choice but to serve the demon who had bonded with him, regardless of their original relationship . . .”

His voice faded into the night, into silence. For a moment he shut his eyes.

“No human being who accepted such a bond could ever be free,” he said softly. “He might think that he was, but that would be just another illusion. There is no surer way to lose one’s soul than to ally oneself with a Iezu demon.”

Something in his tone made the hair on Damien’s neck start to rise. He was about to say something—more to break the mood than to question the man—when a rustling behind him reminded him suddenly that they were no longer a party of three.

He saw Tarrant’s eyes shoot open as he turned back toward the tent, and he could feel the chill of the Hunter’s scrutiny on his back. He hoped that Jenseny didn’t see it as she stood at the edge of the firelight her dark hair haloed by fog.

“I heard voices,” she said weakly. Her dark eyes flickered toward Tarrant, then away again quickly. As if she feared even to look at him. “You said we’d leave when it was dark, and it looked dark, so I came out . . .”

“Quite all right,” Tarrant said softly. His tone was like velvet, silken and cool. “Come to the fire. Sit down. Join us.”

Damien whipped about to confront him, but the Hunter didn’t meet his eyes. Instead his gaze remained fixed on the girl. As she walked somewhat slowly to a place by the fire, and gradually lowered herself to the earth, her eyes rose to meet his own. She seemed to be trembling.

“If you hurt her-” Hesseth began.

“Shhh.” He was utterly still, utterly focused. The power pouring forth from him was palpable. “I know what I’m doing. Our guest has nothing to fear if she cooperates with us. You know that, don’t you, Jenseny?”

The girl nodded dully. There was a flicker of panic in the back of her eyes. Her breathing was slow and heavy.

“You have no right!” Damien protested.

“I have the right of one who’s risking his life on this miserable quest—and I’ll not let you get in my way, priest, I warn you.” He leaned forward slowly, his eyes still fixed on the girl. “She won’t be hurt. Not if she obeys me. She understands that. Don’t you, Jenseny?”

The girl nodded slowly. Something glistened in the corner of the eye nearest Damien. A tear? He ached inside to help her, but was afraid to interfere. He had seen Tarrant’s power work often enough to know that trying to break in now would put the girl at risk. Behind him he could hear Hesseth hissing softly, and he knew that she had come to the same conclusion. He could only guess how much it was costing her.

Damn you, Tarrant. Damn you for what you put us through. Damn you for what you force us to condone.

Helpless, bitter, he watched while the girl’s eyes glazed over, her mind consumed by Tarrant’s hypnotic power. And he remembered all those other times that he’d had to sit back and do nothing while innocent souls were forced to submit to that malignant will. Senzei. Ciani. A frightened rakhene girl. Now this fragile child. His heart ached to see the fear in her eyes, to imagine the terror that was in her soul.

“If you feed on one drop of her fear,” he muttered, “so help me God, I’ll rip out your heart with my bare hands.”

Though the cold silver eyes remained focused on the girl, a hint of a smile curled those thin lips. “Now now, priest. No need to get violent. Everything’s under control . . . isn’t it, Jenseny?”

The girl trembled, said nothing.

“You are so very relaxed,” Tarrant told the girl. His low voice musical in the darkness, rich with silken malevolence. “So very safe. Isn’t that right?”

The girl hesitated before nodding. Damien’s heart twisted.

“No one’s going to hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you at all. The things you fear are far away, and we’re here to protect you. No reason to be afraid. No reason at all.”

A tear squeezed from the girl’s left eye. She said nothing.

“Reverend Vryce told me you were afraid to talk to us. But there’s no reason to be afraid, is there? Because we can protect you. We can keep you safe.”

The girl was still. Her face was drained of color.

“You want to talk to us, don’t you? Because that would help us protect you. That would help us keep the things you fear away from you.”

She shook her head stiffly, fearfully: No.

“You want to talk to us,” he insisted, and Damien could sense the power behind his words. The raw force that towered like a wave over his cool, even pronouncements. He wondered if she could see it, if that was why she was so afraid. What were the parameters of her special vision?

“Go easy,” he whispered to Tarrant.

If the Hunter heard him, he gave no sign of it. With increasing firmness he told the girl, “You want to tell us what you know. You want to tell us what your father said about the rakh. About the place they came from. You want to tell us everything.”

Beads of cold sweat broke out on the girl’s forehead. She shook her head again, more weakly this time. Clearly she was losing ground.

The Hunter’s eyes narrowed. Though his voice was carefully controlled, Damien could sense the growing impatience behind it. Talk to him, Jenseny. Please. Tell him what he wants to know. It’s the only safe course.

“Tarrant.” It was Hesseth. “Maybe you’d better—”

“She’ll talk,” he snapped. “Secrecy is a luxury in times like these, one we can’t afford. She needs to understand what will happen if she doesn’t help us, and then the words will come.”

Sensing his intention—its tenor if not its form—Damien lunged forward toward the girl. Not quickly enough. The Hunter’s power engulfed her like a whirlwind, and she screamed—a shrill, terrible sound. As Damien reached out for her, he Worked his vision so that he could see what Tarrant was doing, what vision he had conjured for her eyes to see-

And he was back in the village, where the slaughter had taken place. No. He was back in the village while the slaughter was taking place. Dark figures coursed the blood-soaked streets, holding parts of human bodies aloft like trophies. Arms. Legs. Entrails. The screams that came from the houses were deafening, broken only by the beastlike howls of the invaders as they gloried in their gruesome indulgence. Then the scene shifted, as the Hunter’s Knowing focused his vision even more finely: he was seeing the inside of the meeting hall now, where a man and a woman had been nailed to the floor, and two of the invaders moved forward with blades that were clearly intended for disemboweling-

And he attacked. Not Tarrant, nor the girl. The vision. Though he knew he lacked the strength to stand against the Hunter—though he knew that to anger the man now might well be suicidal—he couldn’t stand back and let this happen. Not to that fragile soul. He leaned forward and grabbed hold of the girl—her limbs were like ice—and pulled her against the living warmth of his body, even while he gathered himself for a Working. The power was like a fire within him, scalding fury and compassion and raw indignation all mixed in together, fanned by months upon months of frustration into a conflagration almost too hot to contain. Months in the rakhlands. Months at sea. Months in this place, holding his peace while the Hunter tortured, the Hunter killed, the Hunter remade this land in his own malign image. Choking back on his conscience until it bled, until all his dreams ran red with guilt. No more.

It all poured out of him like a flood tide, too much power for one man to contain. It Worked the fae into a wall of fire, which no undead sorcery might pierce. It wrapped Tarrant’s malignant vision in a scalding cocoon and seared, one by one, the fine strands of its construction. Images melted like wax and dissipated into the still night air. Bodies and blood evaporated into dust. Cradling the girl in his arms, Damien beat back the last fragments of the Hunter’s assault, trying not to think about the power that lay behind them. Trying not to consider the fact that when the vision was finally gone there would be only Tarrant and himself, and the hate which he had conjured between them.

And then the full force of the Hunter’s fury struck him. A power born of darkness, of death, of ultimate cold. It roared in his ears as it whipped about him like a tornado, tearing his fiery wall to shreds. Rage, pure rage; the feral fury of a man who was so powerful that no living creature dared to defy him, no man or beast had ever interfered with his plans . . . until now. Damien heard the girl in his arms cry out as the sorcerous hate enveloped them, and he realized to his horror that she was sharing his vision of the assault. God lend me strength, he prayed desperately. Not for himself, but for the girl. Help me protect her. The thought of her innocence laid bare before Tarrant’s assault was so horrible that he struck out in sheer desperation—but his Working was a twisted thing, warped by the force of his despair, and it couldn’t stand against the man. Darkness invaded his vision, his mind, his soul. He felt the girl shiver in his arms as he made one last attempt to summon power. Pouring all the force of his despair into one last prayer, making the very heavens ring with his plea, the currents resonate with his need-

And something responded. A power. A Presence. It was sunlight to Tarrant’s night, peace to his fury, water to Damien’s flames. It soothed and commanded and smoothed and cleansed, washing away the debris of Tarrant’s Working like a spring shower might cleanse the land of dust. The heat of Damien’s rage turned to cool, soothing rain, and he felt the girl relax in his arms as the power washed over her as well. Utter tranquillity. Consummate peace. It unknotted his defenses even as it unmade Tarrant’s assault, casting the dust of their conflict upon the currents. Its power was not force but quiet, like the rippling of lake-water in the moonlight. Damien’s anger dissolved into the night, and with it all his fear. Tarrant couldn’t hurt him now; he knew it, and so did the girl. Nothing fleshborn could hurt either of them.

He saw the forest trees as if through a rippling glass, their edges softened and made wondrous by the power that still filled the clearing. Color shimmered about their bark and among their leaves, and it seemed to him that the branches stirred as if in an unfelt wind. In his arms the child was peaceful, breathing steadily, and he knew that she, too, was possessed by a preternatural peace, an utter confidence in their safety. As for Tarrant . . . the pale gray eyes were narrow and cold, and for once in this journey—perhaps for the first time in his life—Damien had no trouble reading what was in them.

Fear.

Their eyes locked for a moment, then the Hunter turned and moved quickly toward the forest. Damien tried to call out to him, but for a moment no words would come. His body was numb, stunned by the force of what it had absorbed. Slowly, with effort, he regained control of his flesh. He wasn’t aware of how completely the power had filled him until it was gone, or of how blissfully complete he had felt in its presence. Now it was no longer there, and his body ached with regret. He wondered if the girl felt the same. He wondered what Hesseth had experienced. And he wondered about Tarrant’s fear.

“Take her,” he whispered, and Hesseth moved forward to take the trembling child from his arms. Somehow he knew that she wasn’t shaking from fear now, but from awe; in a way that was even more affecting. “Take her,” he repeated—with more strength this time—and Hesseth gathered up the girl in her arms and held her, murmuring rakhene endearments to her as Damien somehow managed to get to his feet.

The ground felt strange. The air tasted strange. The act of speaking was an alien act, that he managed only with effort. “Tarrant . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought. But Hesseth nodded, understanding. And he somehow got his legs to move, to carry him across the encampment to the place where Tarrant had disappeared. A minimal Working, whispered, served to make the Hunter’s path visible, and silently he followed it. Committing himself to the woods, to the currents, and to whatever faeborn mysteries this strange night might have conjured.

But there were no fae-wraiths abroad tonight, and for once Tarrant had made no effort to disguise his trail. Damien found him in a clearing perhaps half a mile from the camp. So dark was the Hunter’s form, so still, that he very nearly passed him by. But something moved him to look again at one of the many shadows which the trees had etched into the Corelight, and there he found him.

He was leaning against a broad, twisted tree, his pale hand resting on its ragged bark. Above him and about him the shadows of leaves fluttered like so many birds, underscoring his utter stillness. His head was pressed against his upraised hand, forehead and palm against the tree’s broad trunk. Wisps of power, night-black, appeared like tiny flames around him, only to be swallowed up by his own darker substance an instant later.

Knowing that the Hunter must have heard his approach, Damien stopped where he was. The strange peace which had possessed him back at the camp had evaporated into the night, but even in its wake the fury of battle did not return. Another emotion—not quite fear, not exactly awe—was taking its place.

At last the Hunter spoke to him. Not opening his pale eyes, nor turning toward the priest. Nor lifting his head from where it was bowed.

“What you tapped into,” he said hoarsely. “Have you ever done that before?”

Slowly Damien shook his head, somehow certain that Tarrant would be aware of his response. The Hunter’s presence seemed to fill the whole clearing, seemed to reach out into the forest and beyond, as if questing for something. No, not questing exactly. More like . . . hungering.

“Do you know what it was that you conjured?” Tarrant demanded. The words seemed to choke him.

He hesitated, at last offering, “A power born of faith.” The description seemed hopelessly inadequate, but he had no better way to describe it. Some things couldn’t be reduced to simple language.

Slowly the Hunter turned to him. His face was pale and hollow in the dim Corelight, as though some terrible disease had ravaged both flesh and spirit. Though Damien knew that Tarrant’s appearance was as much the result of mist-filtered shadows playing across his face as anything, still it was a wrenching, tortured visage. The priest shuddered to look at him.

“Nearly one thousand years ago,” the Hunter muttered hoarsely, “I conceived of a plan to change this world. Wielding human faith like a sword, I meant to remake the very power base of Erna. For years I pored over holy text after holy text—those few which had survived the Sacrifice, as well as others which were written afterward—Grafting my weapons word by word, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence. It was my life’s greatest work, compared to which all else was mere accompaniment. If there was a God of Earth, I reasoned, then we must mold the fae with our faith until our pleas could reach His ears. If there was a God who ruled the entire universe, then we would craft such a message with our prayers that He must surely respond to us. And if there was no One God in either place, nor any being who might adopt that role . . . then the faith of man would create one. A sovereign god of Erna, whose power would be so vast that all the currents of earth-fae would pale in significance before Him. That was my dream. No, more: that was my purpose in existing. And if in the end I chose to barter my soul for a few extra years, it wasn’t so much out of fear of death as a fear of what death implied. Ignorance. Blindness. An inability to see the seeds of my work take root and grow, and to observe what manner of fruit might be harvested from it. Survival for me meant the chance to see the centuries unfold, to watch mankind take what I had given him and add to it, develop it, make it his own, until by his faith he could tame the fae itself. It was a plan so vast that no one human lifetime could contain it, and I burned to see it through to completion. Do you understand, priest? That was what I sacrificed my humanity for. That was why I smothered in blood the core of my mortal existence. Because I wanted to know. Because I wanted to see. Because the concept of dying in ignorance was terrifying to me, and I lacked the courage to face it. Do you understand?”

The intensity of his speech—and his pain—flooded Damien’s mind; it was hard to focus on mere words in the face of such a deluge. But slowly understanding came, and with it the power to voice it. In a voice that resonated with awe, and not a little fear, he whispered, “You looked upon the face of God.”

For a moment the Hunter just stared at him. The hollowed eyes were haunted, and it seemed that he trembled slightly.

“No,” he whispered. “I saw . . . No.”

He turned away again, and leaned his weight against the weathered bark by his side. His eyes fell shut, and slowly—painfully, it seemed—he drew in a slow breath. “Without doubt we have created something,” he whispered. “The faith of millions has finally reached that critical point where it’s capable of manifesting something greater than itself. Perhaps there was a God here to start with; perhaps the will of man created Him. Does it matter how it happened? Something is now active in our world that wasn’t before. You felt it. You saw it. A power so vast that the human imagination can hardly encompass it. A power capable of remaking this world . . .” He drew in a ragged breath; Damien thought he saw his shoulders tremble.

“Shall I tell you what I learned tonight?” the Hunter whispered. “There is indeed a God of Erna. And because of what I am—because of the bargain that I struck so many years ago—I can’t even look upon His Face. This is the fruit of my labors, Reverend Vryce. That I can never gaze upon the result of all my labor. I sold my soul for knowledge of the future, only to have that very pact render me forever ignorant.”

He leaned heavily against the bark of the tree, as if in pain. Silence gathered about him like a cloak, like armor. For a long while Damien dared not compromise it, but at last he said, very softly, “You know as well as I do that pact doesn’t have to be permanent.”

The Hunter turned to him, slowly. Strands of pale hair were fanned across his forehead like a spider’s web. Incredulously he asked, “Are you trying to sell me on repentance? Now?”

“You know that it’s never too late,” Damien said gently. His heart was pounding like a timpani, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “Your own writings proclaimed that.”

For a moment Gerald Tarrant just stared at him. The look in his eyes said clearly that he thought Damien was mad, or worse. Then he blinked, and asked hoarsely, “You really believe that?”

“You know I do.”

“Do you realize what repentance would mean for me? Do you understand the price?”

“I know it means going against the habit of nearly a thousand years. But even so—”

“It means death, Reverend Vryce, plain and simple! My body is nine hundred years older than it has any right to be; what do you think will happen to it when the pact that sustains me is broken? Return magically to the condition of its youth, so that I can pick up where I left off? I doubt it, priest. I doubt it very much.”

“Would death be so terrifying if Hell were out of the picture?”

He shook his head. “It isn’t out of the picture, priest. It never will be.”

“Read your own writings,” Damien reminded him. “The nature of the One God is Mercy, and His Word is forgiveness. The man or woman who truly repents-”

“Do you know what repentance means, for me? Do you really understand it?” There was anger in his voice now, but it had a desperate edge. “Repentance means standing before God and saying, I’m sorry. For everything. All the sins I ever committed, I wish they could be undone. I wish I could to go back to that time and do it all over again, so that Death could take me in my proper hour. I wish I could have died at twenty-nine, without ever seeing the future. I wish I could have died before my dream took hold, before mankind had time to interpret my works. I wish I could have died in ignorance of what this world would become, severed from the world of the living before I could begin to untangle the mysteries that surrounded me. I can’t do it, Vryce. Not honestly. I could say the words, but I could never mean them. And my last dying thought would be of all that I had yet to see, which God’s forgiveness had cost me.” He laughed shortly, bitterly. “Do you really think that would work? Do you really think such an attitude would save me?”

Now it was he who shut his eyes. He could hear the pain in his own voice as he spoke. “You’re trapped by your own intelligence, you know. A simpler man would have found his way back to God long ago.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he whispered. “Don’t you think that knowledge is part and parcel of my damnation?”

He lowered his head, aching to say something that would help, that would heal. But if a man of the Hunter’s intellect could see no way out of this terrible trap, what manner of salvation could Damien offer? At last he muttered, inadequately, “I wish there was something I could do to change things for you.”

“No one can,” he whispered. “But I knew the risk, you see. I knew when I made my bargain that there would be no backing out. I understood it then and I understand it now. It’s just . . . this whole thing took me by surprise. That’s all. After nine hundred years, living beyond the reach of the Church . . . I wasn’t ready. For this.” After a moment he added, “I suppose you were.”

“No one is ever prepared to meet God,” Damien said quietly. “We may think we are, but that’s only because we don’t understand Him.”

Eyes shut, the Hunter nodded. “The girl is safe from me, you realize. I don’t dare Work her again. If even some tiny portion of that Power remained within her, even a faded vision of it—”

“Do you really think you can avoid death forever?” Damien asked softly.

A strange expression flickered across the Hunter’s face. Almost a smile. Almost a tremor.

“I’m sure as hell going to try,” he assured him.

When Damien returned to the campsite Jenseny was asleep, curled up tightly in Hesseth’s arms. For a long time he just watched her, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, feeling the warmth that rose from their close-knit bodies. Hesseth stroked the long black hair gently, separating its knotted strands with her claws. The girl’s face was streaked with tears, but for now it seemed peaceful. At last he whispered, “Is she all right?”

“She will be, I think. What about Tarrant?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope so.” And because he offered nothing more, Hesseth didn’t press him for an explanation.

How well we’ve come to know one another, he thought. Aliens to each other in every sense of the word, and yet we’ve discovered a common etiquette.

If only our peoples could have done the same, so much death might have been avoided. He settled himself down on the opposite side of the fire, and felt exhaustion settle over him like a shroud. Too much for one night, he thought. Too much for any night.

God, show me how to help Gerald Tarrant. Teach me how to reclaim his soul without destroying his humanity in the process. Show me the path through his madness . . .

When sleep began to dull his senses, he made no attempt to resist it. Because sleep was forgetfulness and sleep was peace, and that was what he needed more than anything else right now.

In the stillness of the forest clearing, Gerald Tarrant waited. The first of morning’s sunlight had filtered down through the omnipresent mist, turning the air a filmy gray. It warmed his skin, but not so painfully that he had to leave to find shelter. Not yet.

A figure formed in the space before him, drawing its substance from the mist. As he watched, the Iezu manifestation took on form, color, and at last life. When it was complete, the Hunter nodded in acknowledgment and addressed it.

“It’s nearly dawn, Karril. I called you hours ago.”

“Your pain kept me away,” the demon said softly.

Tarrant shut his eyes. It seemed to Karril that he trembled. “Then I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Thank you for coming despite that.”

“Are you all right?”

For a moment he just stood there, as still as the trees that surrounded him. At last, without answering, he held out his left hand. A small spot of darkness quivered like a flame in the center of his palm. “Will you take this to the Prince for me?”

“What is it?”

“An answer. To his offer.” He shook his head. “No more than that, I promise you.”

The demon held out his hand beneath Tarrant’s, so that the Hunter might pour the unflame into his own palm. It flickered there like a malevolent star, jet black against his own illusory flesh.

“Can I ask what your decision was?”

“I thought you didn’t want to get involved.”

“I seem to be involved despite that, don’t I? So how about filling me in?”

Grim-faced, Tarrant turned away. He said nothing.

“This isn’t like you, Hunter.”

He whipped back to face him; his eyes, sun-reddened, blazed with anger. “Who are you to judge what is and isn’t like me! Who is any demon to judge me? If I thought for one moment—”

Then he shut his eyes as if in pain, and raised a hand to rub his forehead. “I’m sorry, Karril. That wasn’t fair. It’s been a rough night, but I shouldn’t take that out on you. Your service deserves better.”

The demon shrugged. “Every friendship of nine hundred years has its moments of strain. Don’t worry about it.”

“You served me well all those years. Even though I now understand that you didn’t have to.”

A faint smile softened the demon’s expression. “The first human being I ever spoke with will always have a warm place in my heart. Even if he does pride himself on his lack of humanity.” He closed his hand about the black flame, wincing as its power bit into him. “Couldn’t you have chosen a more pleasant form for this?”

The Hunter’s expression darkened. “He sent me true fire. Whether it was meant as a warning or a display of power, the gesture deserves to be returned.”

“Ah. Ever the diplomat.”

“You can carry it, can’t you?”

“There are several hundred things I’d rather be carrying, but I’ll manage. Is that all?”

The Hunter nodded.

“Then I’ll be on my way. Dawn beckons, you know. Take care, Hunter.”

The Iezu form began to fade, its colors seeping out into the fog.

“Karril . . .”

The demon paused as he was and waited.

He whispered it, “Thank you. For everything.”

The demon nodded. Then his flesh became translucent, transparent, and slowly dissolved in the misty gray light of dawn. The black star in his hand was the last thing to fade, and that went out suddenly, like a snuffed candle flame. The smell of conjuration was sharp in the damp air.

Gone to its destination, Tarrant thought. Gone to deliver its message of death and betrayal.

Alone in the light of the early dawn, the Neocount of Merentha shivered.