Crown of Shadows

by C. S. Friedman

  Power. It was power. The raw power of the planet itself, made visible by the Hunter’s ward. Fae. He fell back from it in horror and saw the currents stir as if in response to his fear, saw the patterns of light draw back from him as though in obedience to some unspoken command. No! The light was taking shape, gaining color and substance and solidity, and

  mother lies on the floor, and the earth-fae gathers up about her, forming itself into dark little creatures that reach with sharpened claws toward her skull

  No!

  cathedral and he stands there praying, and the fae takes his words and gives them life and makes the people breathe them in, so that his faith becomes part of their flesh

  No!

  anger like a fist about Vryce, earth-faesqueezing hard to provoke the desired reaction

  He screamed. Not to be heard, not to be saved, but to empty himself of the terror which was choking him. Still the visions pounded at his brain; memories, hopes, and fears rushing through his head in one vast chaotic onslaught, and beyond that the knowledge that the power had always been there, that he had always controlled it, that the price of denial had been to lose a part of his soul. Until now ...

  Something slammed behind him. A door, struck open? It seemed a universe away to him. So did the footsteps that ran toward him from behind, and the hot hands that lifted him up from the floor, struggling to make him stand. Another world, another time. He couldn’t go back to it now.

  He saw the future. The futures. He saw his war won, and the Church triumphant. He saw it lost, and watched the Church wither away in the shadow of that failure. He watched the Church triumph again and again, and he watched it fail also, and each time it was different: future after future unveiled before him in one blinding flood of raw potential. The war was won, but the violence continued; the war was won, but his people’s faith was poisoned; the war was lost and all, all was lost with it. . . .

  He was aware of a hand pressed against his throat to catch his pulse, and the fevered concern of the men at his side fluttered about his head like batlings. They were saying something to him, but their words couldn’t make it through the roar of the fae in his ears. Where was the future with hope in it? he despaired. Where was the path to salvation? Symbols and human figures and fears that had wings swirled wildly about him as he struggled to find some focus. Father? they chittered. Holy Father, are you all right? He saw a demon with the eyes of an insect cut open his head and place dreams inside. Holy Father? Faster and faster now, visions of the past and future tumbling over one other, pouring into his soul faster than he could sort them out. What’s wrong? He needed the right future. Someone call a doctor, fast! The war was over and the Patriarch called his soldiers together, and the fae gathered at his feet in response to him just as it always had, obeying this man who had been a sorcerer since the day of his birth-

  There was terror in that image, but also exultation, for it was a new pattern, a new path. This was the one way he could save his people; this was their only hope. He saw it acted out, he watched it replayed a thousand times within each second as his heart pounded, shaking his body, sending ripples out through the fae

  Hold him still!

  and there was a stabbing in his arm, not fire now but cold, icy cold. He could feel his heart struggling against it, and the visions began to shatter like glass about him. Pain spread through his veins and the fae turned to ice and cracked from his skin, and a darkness descended from the ceiling and a weight came crashing up from the floor-

  Fine.He’s fine.

  What happened?

  I don’t know.

  What did you give him?

  Hard to hear. Hard to see. Impossible to move.

  Is the ambulance-

  Coming.

  Pulse is strong.

  What the hell happened?

  Cling to the vision. Don’t forget!

  Hold on.

  Help’s coming.

  Darkness.

  Nineteen

  The color of pain was red. A raw, ugly red, that stank like rotting meat and oozed inward through his pores until he was filled with it. A red that flayed his nerves alive and then scraped along their surfaces, arousing pain beyond that which any living body could endure. A pain so total that it stripped him of his humanity, it bled him of all intelligence, it left him no more than a core of terror and agony in a universe gone mad, in which waves of pain were the only marker of time.

  And then, in that madness: a human hand, grasping his. The touch was like fire, but Damien gripped it desperately, allowing the contact to define him. Fingers. Palm. Soul. It became the focus of his universe, the single point about which worlds revolved, the core of his private galaxy. Fire blazed along his arm as his muscles split from the strain, bloody strips curling back upon themselves, laying the moist bones beneath bare and vulnerable. Skin, he needed skin, nature’s own armor: he fixed his mind upon that one need until it seemed to him that his muscles were no longer bare, clothing them with the power of his imagination. It was instinct that drove him rather than knowledge, but the instinct seemed true and he clung to it desperately, unwilling to sink back into formless agony again.

  Arm: define it, feel it, believe in it. Shoulder. Chest. Fire lanced across his torso like whip strokes, and in those seconds when his concentration wavered he could feel his newly imagined skin peeling from his body in heat-blackened strips, edges charred to a glowing ash ... the hand that held his gripped him tighter as he fought to regain consciousness of self, and another clasped his shoulder. Good. That made for two points of contact in a universe of burning blood. Two points defined a line. Three points defined a plane. Four points defined a solid....

  And then the redness was gone and he was on his knees, choking on air that reeked of sulfur and burning meat. The hands that held him helped him to his feet, and he accepted their aid with gratitude. The ground was so hot that already his breeches had begun to smoke, and the stink of burning wool added new strength to the noxious melange surrounding him.

  “What was that?” he whispered. He didn’t expect an answer, so much as he needed to test his voice. To his surprise the words indeed sounded, though he distinctly remembered his vocal cords having burned to bloody ribbons at least twice.

  “Did you think the transition would be easy?” a voice from behind him asked. The hands that were gripping him released him, and a wave of panic nearly overcame him at the sudden loss of contact. There was no doubt in his mind that without Karril’s touch he would have been lost in that pain forever. A numbing fear grew in him, that perhaps he had indeed taken on more than he could handle this time. If that was just the gateway to Hell, what lay beyond?

  And then he grew aware of the voice that had spoken. Not Karril‘s, nor anything like it. A more musical voice, higher-pitched, that was painfully but indefinably familiar. He turned around suddenly, so focused on the source of that voice that he hardly saw the surreal landscape surrounding it.

  It was Rasya. No, not Rasya exactly. It was a woman of Rasya’s height and coloring and general form: sun-baked bronze skin, short-cropped platinum hair, long, lean limbs with capable muscles playing visibly beneath. But the face was different, and the clothing also, and this woman’s eyes were so like Karril’s that he shivered to see them set in a body so like that of his lost lover.

  “Why?” he gasped. The stink of sulfur was stronger now, and it was getting difficult to breathe. It was hard to say whether anger or mourning played louder in his voice as he demanded, “Why, Karril?”

  “My life is on the line here, too,” he said. She said. “And I can’t change form in this place, any more than you can. I needed a body that would be strong, enduring, and versatile. Given your orientation, it had to be female. Given your memories....” The woman shrugged stiffly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch the mourning until it was too late. I meant no disrespect.”

  He shut his eyes for a moment, painfully aware of the heat that was baking through his boot soles. “Do you expect s
ome kind of response from me?” he whispered hoarsely. “Is that what this is about?”

  “If I required that to survive, would you be so quick to deny me?” She reached forward and took Damien’s hand again, in a grip more reassuring than affectionate. “Like you, I try to keep all options open.” She pulled his hand, gently but firmly, forcing him to move. “Come on. Time matters.”

  He forced himself to look away from her, toward the bizarre landscape that surrounded them. The land all about was black and glassy, and it smoked with a heat that made the very air shimmer. Overhead a sun blazed, not the wholesome white star of Erna but a bloated yellow shape that sent streamers of flame down almost to the landscape, sparking explosions which in turn sent gouts of lava spouting into the air. The sky surrounding it was as dark as night, as were the shadows its harsh light etched upon the landscape. Beneath his feet the ground seemed to tremble, and as he watched, it cracked not ten feet to the right of him, revealing a glowing red subsurface.

  “Damn,” he breathed.

  “What?”

  “Too vulking realistic for my taste.” He glanced toward the demon, then quickly away. “Which way’s out?”

  “Out’s the way we came. Which route I will gladly point out to you, whenever you’ve had enough. As for what we came here to do ...” She looked out over the landscape, and at last indicated a direction. Thank God, it was away from the crack. “That way, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “This isn’t my realm,” Karril said testily. “I wonder if it would even exist without your Church doing constant publicity for it. Come on.”

  He needed no urging to move, and he moved quickly. He had been in a place like this once and had almost gotten killed, and that was just on its border. How much of the black rock beneath them was solid, and how much was a paper-thin shell hiding rivers of molten lava beneath? Any one footstep might prove the difference. And if the similarity between this place and the real world was unnerving, the discrepancy was downright terrifying. In the real world, if the shell lava cracked beneath your feet, you fell and you cooked and you died. But here, in this unearthly place, where death was a threshold more distant with every step ... could one burn forever? Choking on molten rock, drowning in it, as the flesh was seared from one’s bones over and over again? It wasn’t a theory he was anxious to test.

  “What about Tarrant?”

  “You mean, is he still here?” The Rasya-thing glanced at him. “If he were, there’d be no trail.”

  He looked out over the landscape ahead of them, squinting against the sickening yellow light. “I don’t see a damned thing.”

  “Then it’s lucky I came along, isn’t it?” She nodded ahead and toward the right, to an area pockmarked by pools of glowing lava. “That way.”

  He followed her more by touch than by sight, across a landscape where any step might be his last. The ground split as they passed, but though his heart lurched with every new fissure it was only to vent clouds of burning ash and noxious gas, to fill the air with poison. It clogged his lungs as he breathed it in and set off a spasm of coughing so violent that he feared the vibrations of his body might do more damage to the ground beneath them than the weight of his footsteps. He tried not to remember the time in the westlands when he had almost gotten killed, traversing a lava field all too much like this one.

  ... ground giving way beneath his feet with a sudden crack and he throws himself sideways as the rock beneath his feet shatters, fragments raining down into a heat so terrible that the hairs on his head sizzle and curl as he grasps at a nearby protrusion... rock so hot that he can feel the palms of his skin burning, but if he lets go more than that will burn, and he pulls himself across rock no more solid than that which just failed him, praying that the vagaries of Luck will protect him one moment longer....

  “Don‘t,” Karril whispered hoarsely. “Stop.”

  Her hand had released his. Her face was white.

  He stared at her in amazement, as it hit home just what he had done. Her life is dependent on my state of mind, he thought. Awed-and also frightened-by the concept. Must he not only endure the rigors of Tarrant’s Hell, but do so without undue suffering? He didn’t know if he could manage that. Suddenly it hit home just what Karril had risked by coming here. And what depth of friendship there must be between Tarrant and the Iezu-however well-disguised-to inspire such a journey.

  A geyser of flame spurted suddenly behind them. They sprinted forward across the black rock, but not fast enough to escape its downpour. Molten drops rained across the landscape, and where they struck Damien, a blinding pain stabbed into him; it took all his strength to keep running even as his flesh burned, the stink of woolen ash mixed with smoking meat as he choked on the fumes of his own destruction. Then one foot came down too hard, or else the ground was especially weak; he felt the rock giving way beneath him and threw himself forward in utter desperation, praying for solid rock ahead of him. In that instant of utter panic he thought he had lost Karril forever, but the demon had chosen his form well; the light, lithe body that so mimicked Rasya’s was still by his side as the rock gave way behind him, freeing a blast of heat so violent that it almost knocked him down.

  “This way,” she said. Urging him onward.

  Gasping, he struggled to follow her. The soles of his feet felt as if they were on fire; the leather which hardly protected them had begun to smoke, promising even greater pain in the future. I was a fool to come here! he despaired. What had he hoped to accomplish? Tarrant, you’d better be worth this! Then a fit of coughing overcame him and he staggered forward blindly, guided only by her hand.

  “A little late now,” she said dryly. As if he had spoken aloud.

  The ground was giving way all around them now, and more and more often they were forced to break into a run despite the risk, to keep themselves from falling with it. This is Tarrant’s true Hell. Damien thought, unbridled fear. What more fitting torment could there be for such a man, who had made fear into an elixir of immortality, and turned the whole world into his hunting ground? Then another sulfurous cloud enveloped him and he fell to the ground, choking; his hands and back were seared by the hot rock like meat on a grill.

  “Come on.” Strong arms were gripping him, fighting to raise him up. “There’s a cool spot ahead, I think.”

  Yeah, he thought dully, an oasis in Hell. I believe that. But even that weak fantasy was enough to give him focus, and he struggled to his feet again. The clouds of ash were so thick about them that he could hardly see, but the sound of rock splitting just behind them was warning enough to keep him moving. He followed Karril blindly, clasping her hand in a grip that was sticky with blood, and prayed that the demon’s sight was better than his own.

  And then, incredibly, the heat did abate somewhat. The ground felt more solid beneath his feet. (That could have been because the nerves in his feet had been seared to numbness, he told himself, but then again, it could be real.) He took the opportunity to stop and bend over, gasping for breath in the sulfurous air. Since Karril didn’t urge him to keep moving, he assumed that they were safe. For the moment.

  When at last burning tears had cleared his eyes of dust, and his shaking muscles had loosened enough to let him stand upright, he looked back at the way they had just come and shuddered. Bright streamers of lava had broken through the ground in so many places that he could hardly trace their path; red fountains of molten rock spewed up like geysers where they had only recently been running. He had been near volcanoes in his life—too near, on occasion—but he had never gone through any realm like this. No living man could, he realized. Only in a place where life and death were meaningless could man traverse such a hell.

  “Please,” he gasped. “Tell me we don’t have to go back that way.”

  “No need to worry,” the demon assured him. “Personally, I think the odds are very slim of us going back at all.”

  He glared at the demon and opened his mouth to voice a nasty response to his wisec
rack, but when he saw what the Rasya-body looked like the words died in his throat. Karril was paler than the real Rasya had ever been, and his (her?) skin was an ashen gray. There was fear in the demon’s eyes now, and exhaustion so human that for a moment Damien thought that it, too, was just part of the masquerade.

  My pain is draining him, he realized. Sickened by the thought. Can I kill him, just by suffering?

  There was a sudden crack beside them; instinctively he grabbed Karril by the arm and jerked her away from it, breaking into a run as soon as he was sure that the demon wouldn’t lose her balance. The seemingly solid rock they had been standing on collapsed into a swirling orange river beneath; a gust of heat slammed into them with hurricane force, flames licking at their backs.

  Another island of cool rock beckoned, and they stopped there just long enough for Damien to catch his breath. His muscles ached as though he had been running for days, and his parched throat struggled to draw in enough air to support him. He raised a hand to his forehead to wipe away the sweat that was streaming into his eyes, and to his surprise found that it was whole, unbloodied. Uncooked. Was he healing even as he ran? For a moment it seemed impossible ... and then, with a chill, he recognize the pattern. Yes, his flesh would heal itself, just fast enough to allow it to suffer more. Like the Hunter’s own flesh had done when the enemy trapped him in fire, forcing him to regenerate just fast enough to burn anew. To burn eternally.

  Had those eight days in the rakhlands been so traumatic that they had etched their way into Tarrant’s soul, carving out a niche in his private Hell in which the fire would always burn him? Or did the nightmare already exist within him, and Calesta merely tapped into it when he bound Tarrant within the flames? Either way, it was a terrifying concept. How could a man experience such a thing, and not lose his sanity altogether ?