Black Ridge Pass. Once it had been a windswept corridor from one world into the next, known only to those who cared about such desolate places. Now it was a veritable hothouse of human activity. On the northern flank of the ridge there were already three inns finished and two more under construction, and never mind that the walls weren’t painted yet and the indoor toilets weren’t working. How many people got to hike past a live volcano on their way to the outhouse? On the south side there was little permanent construction, for the most interesting part of the view wouldn’t last more than a few months at best, but a narrow wooden deck had been constructed that led half a mile along the sloping mountainside, so that tourists could drink their fill of the spectacle at hand before it died down forever.
The Forest was burning. Its enemies had waited until the dry season prepared it properly, then set fire to it in a dozen places along its border, so that the purifying conflagration would work its way inward from all sides at once. That way only, they explained, could man be certain that all the degenerate life-forms within the Forest died forever, rather than fleeing to adjacent regions. It was a good plan, and it would almost certainly succeed, and if Damien Vryce took a moment to mourn the loss of the Hunter’s prize horses, or the fact that no man would ever again wield the kind of power that would make it possible to evolve new ones ... well, that was his own human weakness speaking. Progress had its price. In the long run mankind would benefit from this act of destruction, and that was what mattered.
Wasn’t it?
He walked to where the narrow deck began and leaned against its railing, watching as the great fire miles away lit up the land with roaring brilliance, clouds of ash whipping about its head with whirlwind fury. For two weeks now it had burned that brightly, and the winds in the Raksha Valley had roared west instead of east, sucked in by its insatiable hunger for oxygen. A massive thunderhead cloud had reared up from the fire, impossibly high, a vast mushroom of water and ash that towered over the Black Ridge’s walkways like God’s own vengeance made manifest. The great cloud blotted out the sun at times, at other times filtered its light so that dense, bloody shadows played across the walkways. The tourists loved it. The scientists were in seventh heaven, explaining to anyone who would listen—and many who wouldn‘t—that this was fire weather, a natural phenomenon, wholly predictable by their Earth-born art. He watched them drink themselves into joyful oblivion over the fact that they now lived in a world where such things could be measured, understood, predicted-while later that night a sorcerer cast himself from off the very place where Damien now stood, unable to adapt to a world that now declared his kind powerless.
He understood how a man could do that. He didn’t share the man’s despair, exactly—no matter what the Patriarch might have thought, he had never been that addicted to power—but in the secret recesses of his heart he nursed his own, gentler regret. He wanted to See the fae again. Just once more. He wanted to See the corrupt Forest currents surge beneath that cleansing fire, and taste their essence as they came out the other side. He wanted to See what the currents of the shadowlands looked like now that the Mother of the Iezu was active there, now that her children were meeting with journalists on the very trails he and Gerald Tarrant had forged. The loss of his Vision was like a wound that refused to heal, doubly painful because he had done it to himself ... and yes, he knew that what they had done was good, and necessary, even if they hadn’t understood all the implications at the time ... but that didn’t quell the longing inside him. He was, after all, only human.
How would you be dealing with all this, Gerald? They say that adepts can still see the fae, although they can no longer Work it; would you come to terms with that as the price of man’s salvation, or rage against the bonds that your own sacrifice forged for us? Or would you find some new way around the rules, carving out a niche for yourself in this new world as surely as you did in the old?
He wanted the man to be here now, to see all this, to witness the bad and the good and pass judgment on it all with cool sardonic indifference. He had seen him die, but he still couldn’t accept it. Maybe that was what was keeping him here. Maybe until he came to terms with the Hunter’s death—no, with GeraldTarrant’s death, which was a different thing entirely—he wouldn’t be free to start his own life moving again.
Something dark moved against the clouds, that didn’t follow the pattern of ash and wind; without thinking he drew up his springbolt to the ready and prepared to fire—
And there was a crack right by his ear, as loud as if the very mountainside had split open beside him. Startled, he missed the shot. Someone else didn’t. An unseen projectile slammed into the winged thing, hard enough that its scaled wings nearly snapped off as it was thrown back from them. A moment later it exploded into a mist of blood and fire, to the delight of those tourists who had been present to see the shot. Some of them applauded.
His left ear ringing, he turned around to see who the marksman was. A young man nodded back at him, not warmly but apologetically, as one damned well should after firing off a pistol that close without warning. For a moment he almost said something sharp, but he managed to swallow the words before they came out. Never mind that the guy looked like some spoiled brat from a rich house, out to play with explosives now that he could do so without risking his own pretty skin; there was nothing inherently wrong about using a pistol, or killing demonlings, and Erna wasn’t experienced enough in firearms etiquette to make deafening one’s neighbors a mortal offense. He managed to nod stiffly himself and hoped it looked forgiving, then turned back to the view. On both sides of him tourists were gathering at the rail now, straining to see down into the depths below. He wondered how many of them understood the significance of the killing they had just witnessed. Like legions of demonlings killed in the past this creature was now dead and gone, but unlike its predecessors, it would never be replaced. The minds of men no longer had the power to give life to such creatures. Which meant that someday, when enough demons and wraiths and hate-constructs had been dispatched, there would come a time when men and women could walk about safely in the night, as they did on other planets.
It was an awesome thought, and an oddly unnerving one. He wondered if he would recognize that world as his own.
Tarrant would.
He shut his eyes, trying not to feel that loss. The tourists at the rail had kept their distance from him, thank God, perhaps sensing the darkness of his mood. He could hear them chattering on all sides of him, but the sound had no meaning to him. In this one spot, in this one single moment in time, he was alone with his memories. Just him and the Forest.
“Hard to believe that he’s gone, isn’t it?”
Startled, he turned back to see the young man watching him. “What?”
“The Hunter.” The youth resheathed his pistol in a worked leather holster that hung from his belt. Both pieces looked expensive. “I assume that’s who you’re thinking about.”
He shook his head, unable to believe the man’s audacity. “You assume a hell of a lot.”
“You don’t act like one of the tourists. You’ve been here too long to be an ambassador to the Iezu, self-declared or otherwise, and you don’t talk to the news service people.” He nodded toward the fire beneath them. “Why else would a man be here, if not to contemplate the Hunter’s demise?”
Arrogant, he thought, as well as spoiled. He judged the man to be twenty-two, if that, and from the look of him he had never done anything more strenuous than clean and oil Daddy’s firearms collection. Smooth olive skin, without pockmark or blemish, was molded into features that were delicate, unseasoned. Untested. Thick black hair, nearly waist-length, was caught up in a braid at the back of his neck so perfect that there must surely be some expensive pomade keeping it all in place. A body shorter than Damien’s own—but not by much—served as a lean and elegant frame for an outfit of expensive finery. Pants of glove-soft black leather. Knee high riding boots. A doeskin vest embroidered in layers of gold—p
robably the real thing—and a shirt of fine crimson silk that more than one exotic caterpillar had given its life for. All of that was topped off by dark eyes, thick-lashed, that languidly gazed upon the world as if they owned it—
Not twenty-two, he reassessed suddenly. Something in the youth’s gaze made him shiver inside, but he was careful not to let it show. Not that young by a long shot.
“They say you were there,” the youth said quietly.
“So what? You want my autograph?” He turned back to face the fire, wishing the man would go away. “I have better things to do with my time.” And I don’t need new mysteries.
“They say you saw him burn.”
That did it. He needed this scene like he needed another trip to Hell. “They say a lot—” he began angrily.
And then he stopped. Because it was wrong, the whole conversation was wrong. Who the hell was this guy? No one up here knew what Damien had done; he had kept it a secret precisely because he didn’t want to go through this kind of interrogation. He hadn’t even given out his proper name, lest someone figure out where that name had been recently and what it had done. The result was that no one here knew who he was, or what he had done. No one.
“Who the vulk are you?”
A faint glimmer of a smile ghosted across the youth’s face. “One who has an interest in legends.” He nodded toward the fire. “Come to see the heart of all legends burn.”
“Yeah, well, the view’s free.” He turned back toward it himself, and wondered just what it would take to make this intruder go away. Maybe if he ignored him.
“They say you saw him die.”
He sighed, and shut his eyes. What the hell. “I saw.”
“They burned his head.”
The memory was surprisingly vivid. “I saw that.”
“And you’re certain it was his?”
Andrys Tarrant holds the grisly trophy aloft, fingers clasped about its golden hair, and holds it still for all to see. For all to identify. “Whose else would it be?”
“Any man‘s, if the illusion were right.”
He snorted derisively. “There is no more illusion.”
“There are the lezu.”
He shook his head. “I asked them. Or rather, I asked one of them who I think would have given me an honest answer. They wouldn’t interfere, he said. Their Mother forbade it.”
“There is always sorcery,” the youth said quietly.
“No.” His hand fisted tightly about the rail. Damn it, did he have to go through all this again, as if he had never done so the first time? The Hunter was dead. He had seen him die. He had felt him die, as the channel between Vryce and the Hunter was severed by Andrys Tarrant’s bloody sword. Wasn’t that enough? “There’s no more sorcery—”
“No more easy sorcery,” the youth agreed. “But for a man willing to give up enough, there’s still a Pattern to follow.”
“He’d have to give up his life then, in order to fake his death. What the hell kind of sense does that make?”
“Perhaps not his life,” the youth suggested. “Perhaps only part of it.”
A shaft of Corelight breached the great mushroom cloud and reached the platform where they stood. Damien heard tourists murmur in delight as the brilliant light, stained crimson by the cloud, edged the rough wooden walkway in fire.
“What are you suggesting?” he demanded.
“What if the Hunter wanted to stage his own death? What if his would-be killer agreed that that was the best course? What if it was enough for both of them that the Hunter died—the legend—but something of the man at its core survived? That would be death of a kind, wouldn’t it? Surely the sacrifice of one’s identity could be seen as a kind of suicide. Perhaps enough to wield some power even in this altered forum. Think about it,” the youth urged. “It would have to be a sacrifice that came from the soul itself, not just a surface gesture. A true death, from which there could be no resurrection. The body that walked away from that night might never lay claim to its true name again, or connect itself to its previous life in word or deed.” He paused. “It couldn’t even discuss its own fate in any manner except the most impersonal. To do otherwise would be to join itself to the part that had died, and thus consummate the destruction of the whole.”
It took Damien a minute to find his voice. The thought was so incredible.... But no, he thought, not incredible at all. Not if you knew Gerald Tarrant, and what he was capable of.
He asked it quietly: “Do you believe that’s what happened?”
The youth shrugged. “I merely suggest a course the Hunter might have followed. Who can say what the truth is? Think of it as an exercise for the imagination, if you like. I thought that as a fellow sorcerer—” he smiled faintly, “—or rather, as a fellow ex-sorcerer, you might find it ... amusing.”
A gust of wind blew toward them from the Forest, carrying on it a dusting of ash. As it blew across them it dusted featherweight fragments across the youth’s shoulder and hair. Slim gloved fingers rose up and brushed at the soft bits as soon as they landed, in a gesture as reflexive as that of a cat licking its soiled fur. A minimal gesture, chillingly familiar, that should have trailed fae in its wake. It would have, once.
He looked into those eyes—dark, so dark, and not a young man’s at all, not by a long shot—and managed, “Your name.” Finding his voice somewhere, managing to shape it into words. “You never did tell me what it was.”
For a long, silent time the youth looked at him. Just looked at him. As if the look was a kind of dare, Damien thought. As if he wanted to give him time to try to see another man in his eyes, to superimpose another man’s life over his own.
“No,” he said at last. Glancing once more toward the burning Forest, as if the answer were there. “I didn‘t, did I?” Once more a faint smile touched the corner of his lips; the fleeting minimalism of the expression was so familiar that Damien didn’t know how to respond. Did one celebrate such a resemblance, or mourn what it implied? “Does it matter?”
“No,” he whispered. “Not really.”
An expression that Damien couldn’t begin to read flickered across the youth’s face. Something strange, intensely human, an emotion that would have been ill-suited to the Hunter’s former mien. Affection? Regret? “Good-bye, Damien Vryce.” The youth bowed ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving Vryce’s own. “Good luck.”
And then he turned with easy grace and began to walk back toward the pass, silken sleeves fluttering in the wind. Damien almost ran after him. There were things he needed to say, farewells and gratitudes and hopes for the future that he’d never had a chance to express in the Hunter’s lifetime. But he didn’t go after him. Nor did he call out the name that was on his lips, though it took all his self control not to. Because if what the youth said was true, then such words could prove fatal. Instead he watched the young man walk away in silence as if he were truly a stranger, feeling something inside himself twist into a knot as the distance between them grew. Not until a little girl brushed against the stranger, leaving a smear of dirt on that crimson sleeve—not until a gloved hand rose up to brush off the offending stain, and once more came short of succeeding—did a new thought, a startling thought, take shape within Damien’s brain.
If the Hunter had made a bid for life (he reasoned), and if he had talked Andrys Tarrant into going along with it ... if he had sacrificed himself in the way this youth suggested, and done so successfully, so that he now walked the earth as another man, no longer a sorcerer because the Patriarch’s sacrifice had stripped them all of power ... then that man, if he happened to get dirty now, would have to take a bath to get himself clean. Just like everybody else.
In the dawn of a new world, Damien Vryce smiled.
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