Crown of Shadows

by C. S. Friedman

  His soul knotted in anguish, he looked up at Narilka. How helpless she seemed, that fragile body bent back to meet the knife! Fragile unless you knew her inner strength, fragile unless you had seen her defend herself, fragile unless you’d heard stories of the men who had taken her for a victim, only to be taught otherwise....

  He looked into her eyes then, and he knew. He saw the message that was in them, and he understood.

  “Your choice,” the albino snarled, in a voice so bestial it was barely comprehensible.

  Give me a chance, her dark eyes begged. Not trembling with fear, but with another kind of tension. Just one chance.

  He saw the albino’s knife arm tense; the moment of choice was at hand. There was only one thing he could think of that would give her a chance, only one distraction that would work. Though his soul quailed at the mere thought of it, he dared not hesitate. He had failed her in so many ways in the past... he would not do so again.

  He opened himself to the Forest. Not slowly, not carefully, but all at once, casting aside the defenses he had nurtured during their march, ready to die if that was what it took to save her. And power came welling up inside him with stunning force. Not any force of his own conjuring but a dark power, a cold power, that bore a hated signature. Undead, unclean, Gerald Tarrant’s essence coursed through his blood in a flood tide, tearing loose the last fragile moorings of his human identity. Spreading through his flesh like a poison, remaking every organ, every cell, wrapping icy fingers about his soul and squeezing, squeezing—

  With a gasp he opened his eyes. The ground was alive with silver light. The moonlight shivered with music. The walls of the castle glowed with a power that was centuries in the making, his to use at will. But he didn’t need it. It was enough that the essence of Gerald Tarrant looked out through his eyes; it was enough that the man’s power and ruthless confidence echoed in his voice.

  “Release her, ” he commanded.

  The albino’s eyes went wide with shock. Or was it terror? Andrys saw him flinch as he realized just what manner of power his adversary had summoned, and in that moment his hand wavered ever so slightly as it held the knife—

  Narilka moved. Reaching up to grab his knife arm with both of her hands, kicking out behind her as she pulled herself forward and down, struggling to keep the blade from her throat as she forced him over her body. The move was so unexpected that he was thrown utterly off balance. Levered forward over her back, he slammed into the edge of the parapet. The knife clattered down to the courtyard as he grabbed for the edge of the low stone wall with his free hand; his other remained tangled in her hair, and for a moment it seemed as if he might use that as a lifeline to pull himself to safety. But she rammed the heel of her hand into his face hard, so hard that Andrys could hear bone crack; he lost his grip on the edge of the wall and began to slide. For one chilling moment it seemed that he might drag her down with him, but she braced herself against the wall with all the strength she had left and was rewarded a second later when the handful of hair still wrapped about his hand finally tore loose. Down he plummeted, twisting as he fell, and when he struck the hard flagstones beneath, the soldiers were ready for him.

  Shivering, Andrys fell to his knees. He could see Narilka up on the parapet, he could see the albino being hacked to pieces on the ground before him, but he couldn’t connect to any of it. His human emotions had been devoured, and now only a ravenous darkness remained. Andrys Tarrant himself was lost, a mere whisper of human memory fading in the endless blackness; the Forest’s fae was taking its place, claiming the body and soul that had fought it for so long. Currents of power roared through his flesh, until the sounds of the real world were drowned out by the thunder of it. Moonlight scoured his skin like acid as the power of the forest began to remake his flesh, molding it according to the patterns which Gerald Tarrant had established.

  She was alive, he thought as the darkness claimed him. That was all that mattered. The Forest had given her what she needed and now it was time to pay the price for it.

  Andri—

  The roots of the trees sucked at his vitality. The earth lapped at his living heat. He was spiraling down into death, but in the Forest death wasn’t an end. Eternity beckoned, frigid and lightless.

  Andri, talk to me. Please.

  A thousand voices chittered about him. Sounds of the living, they meant nothing to the creature he now was. But one voice echoed down into the darkness, and it made his soul shiver to hear it.

  Andri!

  A human memory stirred in the darkness. Some tiny spark deep inside him began to struggle. The voice drew him like a magnet, pulling him up through the darkness, up against the currents, up to the surface that was so very far away.

  Please, wake up. Please, Andri.

  The last wounded vestige of Andrys Tarrant reached for the sound of her voice with all the strength he had. Feeling the warmth of flesh on his body, of hands—of herhands—touching him, drawing him back.

  “Narilka?” he gasped.

  She fell upon his chest, holding him, weeping. Where her tears touched him, the coldness faded from his flesh. Her voice was a balm that brought him back to the world of the living. The heat of her life burned him, but it was a welcome pain.

  “I’m all right,” he whispered. It took everything he had to move his arm, to lift it up, to place it around her shoulders. For a moment he just lay there, exhausted by the effort. The Forest was still alive in his soul, but its grip was weakening. Soon he would move again. Soon he would get to his feet. Every human act, even one as simple as walking, would reinforce his dominion over his own flesh.

  “I love you.” He whispered it into her hair, oblivious to the filth which caked it. In his eyes she was pure and beautiful. “Don’t ever leave me.”

  The wolves were gone. Had they been mere illusions all along, which vanished when their maker died? Or had the animals simply turned and run, fearful of doing battle without a sorcerer by their side? From where he lay, he could see soldiers moving into the castle, searching the grounds, unpacking explosives. Soon the real work would begin. By dawn the Hunter’s citadel would be rubble, and all the power that it conjured as a symbol of evil would be scattered to the winds. Too bad the Hunter himself hadn’t been there....

  He stiffened. A cold chill wafted up his spine. His arm about Narilka tightened.

  “Andri?”

  He struggled up to a sitting position. She helped him. Though the Forest’s power no longer flowed freely through his soul, a fragile vestige yet remained. A hint of awareness that made his skin crawl, a whisper of ... what?

  “What is it?” she asked him. “Tell me.”

  Slowly, her arm supporting him, he got to his feet. The act of breathing felt alien to him; his lungs ached as though they had gone unused for centuries. What was this new thing that he sensed, this threat that he couldn’t put a name to? It was close, very close. He could taste it.

  And then he knew. He stared at the castle, he sensed what was inside it, and he knew.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  “Andri?” Her voice was soft, but he could sense the fear behind it. “What’s wrong?”

  Calesta wasn’t here now, but Calesta wasn’t needed. Memories returned of their own accord. Samiel. Betrise. Abechar. His own home castle, drenched in blood.

  A dark strength filled him. The love that had warmed his soul gave way to hate.

  “The Hunter’s here,” he whispered.

  Forty

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Maybe it did, Damien thought. Maybe this was the true Hell, and they would spend the rest of eternity trudging through this stifling darkness, heading toward a destination that didn’t even exist. If so, it would serve Tarrant right.

  But it was hard to be angry at a man who was so clearly having a hard time of it. His battered mortal flesh needed mortal things to heal itself—food and water in quantity, safety from stress, adequate sleep—and on this trip it wasn’t likely to get any
of them. He knew what the Hunter had been capable of, but what were the limits of this living man who walked by his side? He couldn’t begin to guess. Yet despite the flush which bore witness to painful exertion, and the increasing stiffness of his stride, Tarrant refused to slow down for any reason. That was the old Hunter, Damien knew. He only hoped the new one was up to past standards.

  When they slowed down for a moment to dig out a portion of their dwindling supplies, or stopped completely—miracle of miracles—to relieve themselves of meals long since processed, Damien took a moment to study his companion. Tarrant was limping now, and the manner in which he walked hinted at blisters near the breaking point, but despite that obvious pain his spirit was unflagging. Whatever the Iezu mother had taken from him, it wasn’t affecting either courage or endurance. What kind of child had the Hunter’s soul given birth to, that would now walk the land with a mind of its own and the ability to orchestrate detailed illusions? He kept looking for a sign of something missing in Tarrant, some facet of his personality that had been drained of substance, but thus far in their journey he had been unable to identify it. Perhaps he had been wrong about the process, and the conception of a new Iezu would cost its father nothing. God willing.

  They had walked for hours now, too many to count, and when Damien raised up his lantern to look at Tarrant’s face, he could see a brief flicker of pain tense across his brow with each step. It did no good to suggest that such pain would only intensify if he refused to pace himself properly. The one or two times that Damien even dared to hint at such a truth, Tarrant glared at him with a venom that would have done his old self proud, as if the suggestion that they take a few minutes to recoup were not only foolish, but deeply offensive.

  “Look,” the ex-priest said at last, when they paused once more to eat a portion of his dwindling supplies. “They can’t find this secret place of yours, right? And they’re not going to burn the Forest until they’re safely out of it, which’ll take days at best.” He leaned back against the cold stone wall, his muscles throbbing painfully as he shifted his weight. “So we’ve got a little time to pace ourselves. We can spare a few minutes to rest. Just long enough to get a second wind.” And he added dryly, “Living people do that kind of thing, you know.”

  Tarrant stared at him for a long moment, then silently upended the canteen and swallowed one more precious bit of its contents. It was their last such container, Damien noted; somewhere they were going to have to find more water, and soon. Tarrant capped the canteen with meticulous care and hung its strap about his shoulder, for once not assuming that Damien would carry it.

  “They intend to blow up the keep,” he said. And he began to walk down the tunnel again with a quick, lop-sided stride.

  “Blow up?” For a minute he was too shocked to move. Then he had to run a few steps to catch up to Tarrant, and for a moment that left him no breath for words. “You mean, as in explosives?”

  “That is the usual procedure.”

  He grabbed Tarrant by the arm, jerking him to a stop. “Are you telling me that while we’re in there sorting through your notebooks the entire keep is going to come crashing down on our heads?”

  A faint ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “I do hope our timing will be better than that.”

  “These are books we’re going after.” His voice was low but his tone was fierce. “Books, Gerald! I appreciate how important they are, but that doesn’t make them worth dying for. I don’t mind risking my life to save a life—or even to preserve an ideal—but to risk something like that for a pile of books—”

  “Those books are a gateway to the future,” he said sharply. “A dictionary of translation between our own species and that of the Iezu’s maker, which will allow us take a step our Terran ancestors never even dreamed of. And if you’re correct about the changes in the fae ... if, in fact, humans will not be able to Work to gain knowledge... then that gateway might never be accessible again. Ever. If we let those books be destroyed now, our descendants will be doomed to centuries of trial-and-error guesswork. And who can tell how much that will net them? The knowledge we sacrifice today may be lost forever—”

  “And you’d be willing to risk death for that?” he demanded. “For knowledge?”

  “I did once before,” he pointed out. “Perhaps the second time is easier.”

  He smoothed the fabric of his sleeve where Damien had crushed it, but bound no fae with the gesture; the wrinkles remained. “Stay here, if you like. The way out will be safe soon enough.” He dropped the canteen strap off his shoulder and let the metal container fall to the floor; in the smooth-walled tunnel the impact echoed like a gunshot. “I’ll go alone.”

  “Like hell you will.” Damien reached down to catch up the canteen. Tarrant was moving quickly; he had to jog to catch up with him. “Who’ll get you out of trouble next time if I’m not there?”

  The Hunter made no answer.

  The tunnel began to slope upward at last, hinting at an end. Damien’s legs hurt so badly as he forced himself up the angled floor that he feared they would lock up from exhaustion and refuse to carry him; he didn’t even want to think about what Tarrant was feeling. How long had they been walking now—one day? Two? If they did get blown up they’d have a chance to rest, at least. It didn’t sound all that bad right now.

  At last, just when it seemed that neither of them could manage another step, they came to the base of a staircase carved into the mountain’s stone. Without even pausing for breath, the Hunter began to ascend. Damien saw him stagger once and he braced himself to catch him from behind, but the Hunter put out a hand against the wall of the tunnel for balance, paused long enough to draw in one long, shaky breath, and began to climb once more. The man’s determination was inhuman, Damien observed as he climbed unsteadily behind him. And why should that surprise him? This was a man who had once bested Death by sheer force of will; why should a little detail like physical pain slow him down?

  They climbed two flights’ worth of stairs, maybe more. At the top there was a small landing where they paused to catch their breath, and a heavy alteroak door barring the way beyond. Thick iron braces were clearly meant to hold a wooden bar that would lock it from this side, but—thank God—that wasn’t in place. Damien wasn’t sure he could have lifted it. Without asking for help, Tarrant grabbed hold of the nearer brace and began to pull; when it was clear that his effort wasn’t enough, Damien grabbed hold of the other one and added his strength to the effort. Together, inch by inch, they pulled the massive door open. Its hinges made a creaking sound loud enough that Damien flinched, and a foul smell gusted through the opening, right into his face. It was an odor of rotting meat and bodily waste and at least a dozen other things that he didn’t care to identify, and for a minute or two it was all he could do not to vomit. What the hell was going on here?

  If Tarrant noted the smell, he made no mention of it. When the door was open far enough to admit a man, he slipped through, and Damien followed. As he did so, he turned up the wick of his lantern a bit so that they could see the space they were entering. It was a small chamber, crudely carved, with little in the way of comfort or decoration. There was a large slab table in its center, carved whole from the same gray stone, and his lantern’s dim light picked out several objects that lay upon its surface. Damien took a few steps closer, trying to make out what they were. Chains. Manacles. Feces of some sort, possibly human, that had been smeared across the table’s surface. The latter smelled pungently recent.

  “Do I want to know what this place is?”

  “No,” Tarrant stared at the mess on the table for a few seconds, his eyes narrowed to slits. God alone knew what he was thinking. “Suffice it to say that I kept it somewhat cleaner.”

  He moved to the far corner of the room, where a lighter door swung open easily at his touch. As they passed through this one, Damien could hear faint sounds from above, murmurs and impacts transmitted down through the layers of rock. The soldiers of the Church must be
very close.

  “My wards will hold,” the Hunter said quietly, as if sensing his thoughts. As they walked on blistered feet through the fetid darkness, Damien wondered which of them he was trying to convince. Then suddenly the Hunter drew himself up, as if alerted to a hostile presence. Damien stiffened and drew his sword, ready for action. But Tarrant’s eyes were fixed upon the ground, where the earth-fae would be bright and rich with meaning; it was knowledge that had alerted him, not some foreign presence.

  At last Tarrant said, in a voice that was still and cold, “He’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Amoril. My apprentice.” The pale eyes narrowed. “My betrayer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He seemed to hesitate. Were the messages of the fae less clear to him now that he had no Working to interpret them? “Yes,” he said at last. “He lived—and ruled here—long enough to leave his mark upon the currents. That stink is his as well, no doubt... or that of his animal familiars. He never was fastidious.” The thin mouth curled in distaste. “That he’s gone now is equally clear, and there’s only one way to explain that.” He looked at Damien; his expression was grim. “If they’ve truly killed him, then we have very little time left.”

  They moved on, through a space that was more cavern than tunnel, in whose distant recesses water dripped with agonizing slowness. Now and then a noise would drift down to them, echoing through some flaw in the stone overhead. Soldiers’ voices, issuing orders. Animals’ howls, the cries of the dying. It was good that they could hear such things, Damien told himself. It was when the noises stopped that they would be in real trouble.

  They came to another door, this one so finely worked that it seemed out of place in the rough stone corridor. Tarrant touched a ward at its center, which may have been meant to unlock it; the polished wood pushed easily inward, and the two men moved into the room beyond. Damien’s lantern light revealed a modest chamber, shelf-lined, which might have been a library in another age. Tarrant’s workshop, no doubt.