Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  “Yes,” Kronos said. “You and I have something in common, Mr. Fox.”

  “But it isn’t just us, is it?” Garret asked Artemis, laying his hands gently on her shoulders. “Can you feel everyone? My God, how can you stay sane?”

  “She can experience the feelings of anyone she comes into contact with,” Kronos said. “She helped me understand the innermost needs and ambitions of the Freebloods we approached in the Citadels. When first I realized how much this made her suffer, I tried to shield her. As I should have shielded her from you.”

  “Shielded her?” Garret said. “My God. The War...”

  “Indeed,” Kronos said. “It is why I tried to keep her away from the battlefields. She was nearly driven mad by the savagery.”

  “I was not mad,” Artemis protested, pulling away from Garret. “I am not as weak as he claims.”

  “True enough, my child,” Kronos said, “it was your strength that enabled you to survive.”

  Garret’s powerful desire to hold Artemis mingled with his fear of making things worse for her, but his pity was rapidly transforming into suspicion and anger—not at her, but at Kronos.

  “So what happened in Oceanus, when you tried to spread your ideas?” Garret asked. “How was that protecting her from Opir savagery?”

  “When Artemis and I were together, she was safe.”

  “Safe? You abandoned her.”

  “No!” Artemis said, moving to stand between them. “Kronos did help me.”

  “Help that obviously didn’t last,” Garret said.

  Remembering how she had influenced Flavia’s thoughts, Artemis tried to soothe Garret’s anger. A dazed look came into his eyes, and Kronos cast her an inquiring glance. She realized what she was doing and stopped, horrified at how easy it was to reach for her forbidden talents just because it seemed the simplest course of action.

  “I had to learn to manage my abilities,” she said, trembling with self-disgust.

  “Because anything less would eventually have destroyed her mind,” Kronos said. “But you, Mr. Fox, must have fractured her armor and left her defenseless from you and everyone else.”

  “No, Kronos,” Artemis said. “It would have happened sooner or later.”

  “Without the additional impetus of the blood-bond?” Kronos shook his head. “Mr. Fox knows I’m right.”

  Artemis recognized the precise moment when Garret began to accept everything that Kronos had told him. He tried desperately to mute his feelings—toward Kronos, toward the Freebloods who had attacked him, even toward her.

  It only made things worse.

  “How much do you care for Artemis, Mr. Fox?” Kronos asked. “Enough to leave her with me, so that I can teach her to master her abilities again?”

  “P-please,” Artemis stammered.

  “Look at her!” Kronos said. “She is caught in your hatred of me, in the web of your irrational humanity.”

  “No!” Artemis said. “Garret, you must believe—”

  “There is more,” Kronos said, relentless in his honesty. “Artemis can also project her own emotions. She can share her feelings with others, cause them to experience her wishes and desires, even without conscious effort.”

  “And I refused to do it!” Artemis said. “Not in the Citadel, and not afterward.”

  “But you used that power on Flavia, did you not?” Kronos asked.

  “Is this true, Artemis?” Garret asked, searching her eyes. “Can you manipulate what other people feel?”

  His question felt like an assault, though he had every right to ask it. Could she have manipulated Garret in the past without realizing it, compelling him to save her from the militiamen and later “influencing” him into joining Kronos?

  “I never did it when...when you and I were together,” she stammered.

  “Indeed,” Kronos said, echoing her thoughts, “why should she try to influence your feelings, since, being such a very civilized human, you certainly needed no encouragement to save her life when you first met? And surely your devotion to her was reason enough for you to help her escape Delos and join forces with me and my disciples.”

  Artemis heard the stinging sarcasm in Kronos’s words, the eagerness to sow doubt in Garret’s mind. It hurt to know that he so badly wanted Garret gone that he would use any tactic to achieve that result. It hurt much worse to realize that Garret was now questioning everything he knew about her, weighing all their interactions, wondering if everything he’d done had been of his own free will.

  “You’re right,” Garret said. “I didn’t need any encouragement to get her away from the militiamen who wanted to kill her. I didn’t need a blood-bond or any kind of push to help her escape from Delos, or trust her reasons for helping you get away.”

  Sucking in a sharp breath, Artemis went to Garret and leaned her head against his chest. He put his arms around her and held her lightly, his gaze never leaving Kronos.

  Kronos smiled. The tips of his teeth were very white in the shadows. “I admire your loyalty, Mr. Fox,” he said. “I’m quite certain that Artemis never abused her abilities. But she is still suffering because of them. And you.”

  Garret’s face might have been carved from granite. “When we’re alone,” he said, “I’ll ask her. And she’ll tell me the truth.”

  “Unless she allows me to protect her as I did before, she will lose her sanity.”

  “You’re wrong, Kronos,” Artemis said, slipping free of Garret’s arms. “I know you hate Garret. You would do anything to—”

  “Your involvement with him has warped your senses,” Kronos said. “I hold no hatred for him, or any human.”

  Perhaps, Artemis thought, her senses were warped, but Kronos was telling the truth. There was no hatred. Contempt, yes. Disgust that she had chosen the company of a human over that of her former lord and protector. And he emphatically wanted her by his side.

  But there was something else. Something that floated just beyond her reach.

  “Laying the blame upon Garret changes nothing,” she said. She turned to Garret again. “I have no wish to separate unless it is your choice.”

  “It won’t be that easy to get rid of me,” Garret said, laying his palm against her cheek.

  “Can you control your emotions, Mr. Fox?” Kronos asked, speaking over Artemis’s head. “Can you change the very nature of your being?”

  “It is not his responsibility to change,” Artemis said, taking strength from Garret’s trust. “I can learn to master my ability again.”

  “Do you still require further proof?” Kronos asked Garret. “Artemis, come to me.”

  “She isn’t your vassal now, Kronos,” Garret said.

  Before Garret could react, Kronos bounded toward Artemis, swift as a timber wolf, and embraced her. She stiffened to fend him off, but almost at once the tumult in her mind subsided. Kronos’s and Garret’s emotions—and her own—dimmed to a manageable pitch.

  “Look at her now, Mr. Fox,” Kronos said.

  Chapter 19

  Though Artemis did nothing, it was clear that Garret saw what Kronos wanted him to see. His pain was a distant thing to her now, but she recognized it in his eyes, in the way a muscle jumped in his cheek.

  Once, she had simply accepted that something about Kronos helped to shield her from the worst of the side effects of her abilities. Now it came to her that she had never understood how he did it, just as she now wondered how Kronos had so quickly convinced Garret.

  “We can still help you find your son,” Kronos said to Garret, “but you must stay away from Artemis. I will help her break the blood-bond, and—”

  “Let me go, Kronos,” Artemis said.

  “You heard her,” Garret said. “You can’t hold her against her will. If you try, I will stop you.”

&n
bsp; “I will not let you die for his sake,” Kronos said, stroking Artemis’s hair.

  Instinct claimed victory over discipline, and Artemis acted almost without thinking. She turned her anger on Kronos, and he released her abruptly, his surprise almost comical.

  Stunned by her own act, Artemis backed away. Garret was behind her, as solid as one of Delos’s walls.

  “We need to go,” he said. “You have to take my blood, and we can’t do it here.”

  “Think, Artemis,” Kronos said, recovering from her emotional attack. “You and I understand each other as the human never will. Not because you are Opir and a Freeblood, but because you are beyond both.”

  His words made no sense to Artemis. But then again, right now nothing did. “If you think I will use this ability to win other Freebloods to our cause—” she began.

  “I would never expect that of you,” Kronos interrupted. “But I need—”

  “Let’s gather our things and get out of here,” Garret said, grasping Artemis’s arm. But when she looked at Kronos, she remembered the old days—his compassion for the Freebloods struggling to survive in Oceanus, his gentleness with her, his flawless logic.

  What had changed him? Kronos had never been so possessive before, so determined to control her. How had she failed to see that Garret’s concerns about her old master might have a basis in fact?

  “Stay,” Kronos said, extending his hand.

  “Artemis,” Garret said softly. “We’ll find a solution.”

  She went with him. There had never been a question of that, though Kronos was clearly furious with her decision. Garret knew she was starving, and he would have physically attacked Kronos if the Opir had tried to hold her, with absolutely no regard for his own life.

  But the intensity of his emotion was such that she couldn’t separate it from her own. Once they had collected their things under the suspicious eyes of the other Freebloods and left camp, her desire for blood had become indistinguishable from his feelings for her. They traveled for a full mile, Garret half supporting her, before they found a place for her to take his blood.

  At first, it was like surrendering to her most primitive instincts: Garret baring his throat, her teeth piercing his skin, the blood flowing into her mouth. But then she felt the joy, the contentment, the feeling of utter completion enhanced by the blood-bond. She realized how much she had been missing Garret’s arms around her. The idea of cutting herself off from his emotions suddenly seemed unbearable.

  “Garret,” she said when they were finished, “you have no reason to fear what I can do. I will never—”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, shifting her into a more comfortable position in the crook of his arm. “Is it true that I broke down your mental shields and left you defenseless?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “Kronos exaggerated. I did begin to feel your emotions soon after we met. At times I was uncertain, but I was never helpless.”

  “But you have been affected by my emotions, my humanity.”

  “Do you think that is such a terrible thing?” She grabbed his hand, feeling hard muscle, calluses, the way his fingers closed around hers. “I realize now... Kronos thinks he knows me. But I am not the same as I was in the Citadel, when I worked with him.”

  “Kronos recognizes your courage and your skill,” Garret said, “but he doesn’t seem to realize that you have qualities he can’t comprehend.” He stroked his thumb over her lower lip. “Kronos won’t succeed in teaching Freebloods to change their way of life, because he wants to dominate too much. He’ll never set an example they can follow.”

  Artemis couldn’t meet his gaze. She had come to the same conclusion, and it hurt as much as Kronos’s treating her like a vassal, bound to his will.

  “Nothing he said could make me stop trusting you,” Garret said, turning her face toward his. “The empathy wasn’t only one way, Artemis. It also made me see you more clearly.”

  “Then you can forgive me for hiding this from you?”

  “Humans and Opiri have another thing in common. They tend not to trust those who are different. You were protecting yourself by concealing what you could do, but you refused to rely on your other abilities to keep yourself safe.” He looked at her very gravely. “I don’t know if I can block my feelings from you, at least not quickly enough. You’ll have to teach me to—”

  “No.” She smiled. “I don’t want to be cut off from you ever again.”

  Garret took her in his arms and kissed her. His pride filled her to overflowing, and it was only their precarious circumstance that prevented them from following their most basic impulses.

  “There is one thing I’d ask of you,” he said when they had finally separated. “If your empathy will help us find Timon, will you use it?”

  Jerked out of her drowsy contentment, Artemis played his question back in her mind. She had almost forgotten Timon in the drama of what had happened with Flavia and Kronos.

  She felt a mingling of shame and anger, a part of her wondering why she hadn’t thought of it herself, and another part—the old Artemis, who found it so difficult to trust—wondering if Garret found it so easy to accept her “talents” because he saw them as a means to get to his son.

  Kronos had implied that Garret wanted to use her abilities, but Garret wasn’t like Kronos. He wouldn’t want her to use her mental powers to alter the thoughts and emotions of other beings.

  Still, even after she had convinced herself of Garret’s benign intent, she continued to feel uneasy. The first flakes of snow were falling as they broke camp and traveled side by side, moving quietly and without talking.

  Near noon, when they paused to rest again, they had nearly reached the old Canadian border. The hilly landscape was only lightly dusted with snow, but the white-topped mountains of British Columbia—and the camp of the Master—still lay before them.

  Artemis scouted ahead, heeding her sense that they were being watched. Their pursuer’s emotions were so muted that she didn’t recognize him until she was nearly on top of him.

  Pericles froze in place when she found him, a little nervousness seeping through the strange but familiar barrier around his mind.

  “Artemis,” he said in a flat voice. “Are you all right?”

  “What are you doing here, Pericles?” she asked. “Spying for Kronos?”

  There was no reason to be so hard on him, and she regretted it immediately. But Pericles seemed not to notice her accusation; she almost felt as if he were looking right through her.

  “Kronos is in trouble,” he said slowly.

  Immediately Artemis was on her guard. “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

  “The other Freebloods turned against him,” Pericles said. “Flavia said that he trusted you too much and broke his own laws by letting you consort with a human. They attacked him and left him in a bad way.”

  Artemis’s alarm quickly gave way to confusion. Pericles’s words were stilted, almost as if he were reciting by rote.

  And that barrier...

  “When did this happen?” she asked, setting aside her troubling thoughts.

  “Soon after you left,” Pericles said. “He’s alone. I thought maybe you could help him.”

  Artemis glanced over her shoulder toward camp. The last thing she wanted was to leave Garret now, and this could all be a ploy by Kronos to get her back.

  If it was a ploy, he might not be injured at all. But she couldn’t bring herself to take that chance. Whatever he had said or done, she couldn’t leave him to die if she could find any way of preventing it.

  Briefly, she considered her situation. She had fed well not long ago. She carried the basic necessities in her pack, and she had her bow and quiver. She couldn’t return to camp and try to explain to Garret why she was going back for Kronos, because he would surely t
ry to stop her.

  As long as she found him again in a few days, she wouldn’t lose too much of her strength.

  “Listen carefully, Pericles,” she said. “I’ll go back to find Kronos, but you must stay here and tell Garret why I’ve left. Tell him not to come after me. He needs to go on ahead. We have a good idea of where the Master’s camp is located. Tell him I’ll look for him there.”

  “I understand,” Pericles said.

  She gazed at him a moment longer, doubting both him and herself. But she had made her decision. Leaving Pericles to carry out her instructions, she set a fast pace southwest to Kronos’s camp.

  She found him alone and injured, just as Pericles had told her. Bleeding profusely, he had rolled under a clump of thick bushes, the dark red tatters of his clothes a testament to his injuries. But his wounds had closed, and he opened his eyes when Artemis knelt beside him.

  “Pericles sent me,” she said, gripping his hand. Pain and anger and shame came from his mind to hers through their touch. “He said the others attacked you.”

  Kronos choked on a laugh. “Yes. I confess to being surprised that they left me alive.” He squeezed her hand. “I knew you would find me again.”

  She wetted a piece of cloth with her canteen and wiped his face. “You will need blood quickly,” she said. “It is fortunate that they also left you your daycoat. Rest here, and I will find game for you.”

  “Don’t leave me alone,” he said.

  His vulnerability softened her toward him in a way she wouldn’t have believed possible, but she knew she couldn’t give in to pity. “You must have fresh blood to recover,” she said, “and I will only be gone a very short time.”

  As she rose to leave, he touched her leg. “Garret?” he asked.

  “I sent him on ahead.”

  With a long sigh, Kronos nodded and closed his eyes.

  Artemis returned an hour later with a deer slung over her shoulder. She stood over Kronos and forced him to take nourishment, even when he turned away in disgust.